The Unknown Devil
by Mai Kusakabe
Summary: Ace hadn't expected his last week of imprisonment before his execution to be any different from all the years preceding it. Then again, he hadn't expected to have Marco the Phoenix as a cellmate for that week, or that Marco's presence would shake his bleak world so much.
1. Chapter 1

This story has been written for the OPBigBang 2015, hosted by ImperialMint (who was great and let me join a while after the sign-ups for writers were closed :D Thank you so much for that ^^)

My partner for the event is Tembrook :) you can find her on tumblr here: tembrook. tumblr

And deviantart here: tembrook. deviantart

As for the art for this story, we have the cover AND another lovely piece you'll find in part three :D (for ffnet Tembrook had to adapt the cover, so here's the link to the whole image :) (just remove the spaces) 41. media. tumblr f354388aa632a498b3586dbd32c30f02/tumblr_nl4hzvwzXf1tt6ywso2_1280. png)

I'm also putting the links on my profile page.

Now, on to thanking people :D

I have to thank Tembrook, aside from the amazing art, for putting up with my incessant whining and helping me with some troublesome plot points. Same goes for Aerle, who beta read this and also had to put up with me xD And, though this was a while ago and I'm not sure you'll remember, I wanted to thank MyLadyDay too, because when I first had this idea she was the one who helped me give it shape :D

With all that said, here's the story :)

* * *

**Part I**

"Hey, Pops, look at this."

Edward Newgate, Whitebeard, lowered his bottle of sake to look at what Marco was offering him. It was a copy of today's newspaper, which he still hadn't read, and, if Marco thought he should read it, there must be something important in it.

It didn't take long, the article took the whole first page.

'_Gold Roger's son captured!_' read the headlines, and then the text began to tell a tale about the demonic boy —named Portgas D. Ace, and Whitebeard was sure he hadn't heard that name before— and heroic marines and blah blah blah.

From the photograph on the paper, he was a skinny, yet somewhat muscular boy with dark hair that did resemble Roger's somewhat, and who had freckles that had to be inherited from his mother. The boy glared at the camera, eyes hard and angry.

"Have you ever heard this name?" he asked Marco, who kept up with the news of the world far more than he did.

"Never," Marco said, shaking his head. "You think the kid was having a normal life when the marines caught him?"

Portgas D. Ace… No, he had definitely never heard or read that name before. He might have never met the kid, but there was a thing he could say for sure; anyone related to Roger, if they had become a criminal, would have been a big shot.

"Most likely."

At least this explained the reason why Roger had turned himself in, or more like why he had waited so long after dissolving his crew to do so. He probably had tried to find a way for his woman to survive —because surely any woman with a connection to him must have become a target— and the kid wouldn't have made things easier.

He noticed there was no mention of the mother in the whole article.

* * *

Ace stopped moving, lowering his stretched leg and dropping to a sitting position on the stone ground, when the loud noise of the level six doors opening filled the whole cavern-like floor, over the surprisingly mundane conversations of the prisoners being kept there.

His eyes fixated on the door, as apparently did those of all the other inmates because, once the face of the man the two monstrous guards were leading in became visible, the previously calm prisoners burst into jeering laughter and mocking comments. It was impossible to discern whole sentences from all the loud voices mingling, but several words were repeated enough times to catch his attention. Whitebeard, bastard, Phoenix…

The man walking through level six, back straight and head held high as though he couldn't hear or didn't care about all the taunts being thrown his way, had to be somewhat taller than Ace himself, had a strange tuft of blond hair at the top of his head while the rest of it was either shaved or bald, bored-looking eyes —of which Ace couldn't discern the color in the dim light— and was muscular. There was a tattoo on his chest, some sort of strange cross, but Ace didn't get a very clear view of it from here. The man wasn't dressed in prisoner clothes, which meant he must be scheduled for execution soon, but he was barefoot, his feet shackled together by thick, heavy chains the same way that his hands were behind his back.

He moved so confidently it looked as though he was the one setting the pace for the two guards instead of the other way around.

Ace had never seen a picture of the man, but could identify him easily enough. It was, after all, impossible to spend even a week in level six without hearing at least one conversation between prisoners cursing Whitebeard and his crew. Marco the Phoenix, First Division Commander and first mate of the Whitebeard Pirates. A lot of men here held a personal grudge against him, and many had been defeated by the man at some point. In some cases, they had landed in their cells as a direct consequence of those defeats. They were showing that hatred through their comments now, not that Marco seemed to care.

Ace was surprised when the guards headed for his cell. It looked like even level six was becoming overcrowded lately —he had overheard some guards complaining a while ago about the excess of prisoners in the upper levels.

He moved to the far end of the cell, the chain shackled to his right foot allowing him to walk around the whole rectangular space —not that it was too big to begin with, but it was more than most people in this level had— and he didn't say a word when the door was opened.

The guards released the thick handcuffs holding Marco's hands together, forced —though it wasn't like he resisted— him into a sitting position against the wall, raised his hands to shackle them, wide apart, to two until then unused chains hanging from further above in the stone wall and chained his feet to another two of those shackles, these on ground level. There was another thick chain wound around his waist and secured to the wall, to an opening between the ones holding his hands. That one was most definitely overkill, and Ace absentmindedly thought it must have been one of Hannyabal's ideas.

The pirate had probably more metal on him than five other prisoners in this level put together.

Ace grimaced when one of the guards gave Marco the traditional hit —to the head, no less— with the spiked iron club before leaving, but the guy just grinned. At Ace.

He hadn't paid much attention past the cursory examination before, because bloodied people were a common sight here, but that grin looked so out of place that Ace's brain finally registered how Marco, open shirt torn in numerous places and pants ripped here and there —the blue sash around his waist was the only undamaged garment, really— still had remnants of blood that had survived the sterilization bath. As well as both some open and scabbing wounds all over his body.

A long silence, only cut by the continuing jeers of the other inmates, fell over the cell after the guards had left.

"Hey."

Ace blinked. Had the man just greeted him? Yes, and that grin was still there. It wasn't wide, but it was there, friendly and directed at him. The only one who ever grinned friendly at him was Gramps.

"Hey," he returned, hesitant.

"You're Roger's kid, right?"

Ace sighed, barely refraining from groaning. Years ago, he might have growled, yelled and tried to murder whoever dared to ask that question, but by now he had gotten so used to people knowing who he was that he just didn't care enough to become angry about it anymore. That bastard Hannyabal had made sure of it, yelling for the whole sixth level to hear who his damned father was the moment Ace was put in this cell. He had been threatened, insulted and subjected to many definitely too detailed stories after his fellow prisoners had discovered it. If there was anyone as hated as Whitebeard in this place, that was Gol D. Roger.

"So the article's already been released, huh? What did it say?"

"What do you mean 'what did it say'? What should it say?" Marco actually looked slightly curious at that. Ace thought it was strange he could pull that look off with his eyes half-lidded: they made him look like he could fall asleep at any given moment, though that might be just the poor illumination here.

"Dunno, I just doubt the bastards would say I've been here since I was thirteen."

The aforementioned eyes opened like saucers. One corner of Ace's lips twitched. That expression really didn't suit him.

* * *

"Thirteen?!" Marco exclaimed. _What the fuck?_

"Yeah. Apparently, the image of pursuing evil and destroying it until the end of the world wouldn't go so well if that evil's a little kid, so they waited," Ace explained, shrugging. He had such an indifferent expression that he could have been talking about the weather.

"You know you're going to be executed, right?"

"Yeah." Another shrug. Did he really not care?

"Why?" That earned him a confused blink, and Marco had to elaborate. "Why are you going to be executed? What did you do?"

"I'm Roger's son. Shouldn't have been born." That third shrug was like a punch to the stomach.

They lapsed into silence after that. What did you tell someone who was fine with being killed just because they _existed_?

* * *

Izo sighed.

"Looks like it's a good thing we I decided to check on you, isn't it?" he said said into the den den mushi. He knew Jinbe enough to be able to predict what would follow, and cut in before he could say a word. "Don't. Just call the marines and tell them you thought better about it and agree to participate."

"I don't want to fight against you, Izo," complained Jinbe all the same, and Izo sighed again.

"Jinbe, you _won't_ be fighting against us, so go make that call and don't throw your title away over this. "

"Why are you saying that? You _are_ going, aren't you?"

Izo smirked, and his voice reflected it as he spoke.

"Oh, yes, but we'll just skip the theatrics."

* * *

Marco refrained from sighing. He couldn't have been in this cell for more than three hours, and yet he was already thoroughly bored. The other prisoners had tired from yelling at him what must be twenty minutes or so ago —and, seriously, couldn't they at least be original about their threats?— and Ace hadn't talked at all after that first, depressing short conversation.

Portgas D. Ace was shorter than Marco, but probably not by too much, with dirty dark hair —were there showers in Impel Down? Odds said there weren't— that fell unevenly inches above his shoulders. If Marco had to guess, he would say he cut it himself. They certainly didn't give haircuts around here. Ace was almost deathly pale, enough to make Marco wonder if he had ever been directly exposed to the sun since arriving here, had some muscles in his body and was way too thin, though admittedly not as thin as one would expect from an unwilling inhabitant of this place. The prison shirt he was wearing, dirty and ripped at a couple of places, didn't fall off him the way clothes did from sickeningly thin people, which didn't mean it fit either. It was maybe a couple of sizes too big, and reached down way past his hips —and ass, Marco had noticed when Ace had turned around. The pants he was wearing, however, were too short and reached only down to mid calf. They were also tight, and had he had any more meat on him they would probably have broken at the seams by now.

Pallor, clothes and general hygiene aside, he could _almost_ have passed as a normal boy if it weren't for his eyes. They weren't dead, per se, there was a shine to them; a muted, shadowed shine that spoke of years of hopelessness, as if Ace had taken his soul, placed it inside a box and wrapped it in chains to keep it locked.

Ace, Marco noticed, was staring right back at him now, barely blinking and completely unashamed, his eyes roving over Marco's body. He wondered if Ace even remembered what embarrassment, propriety or subtlety meant. Probably not, if he had spent so many years with these neighbors. He was sitting, legs crossed, at the opposite side of the cell, next to where the chain around his ankle met the wall. It didn't seem to bother him, and Marco assumed he had long since learned to move as if it had always been there.

It was kind of a depressing thought.

"Oi, Ace."

"Yeah?" Ace's eyes settled on Marco's face.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty."

Marco's eyebrows went up to for what most people would have been their hairline. _Twenty?_ Hadn't the twenty second anniversary of Roger's death been some months ago?

Around the time Thatch died.

There had been no party this year, but he had drunk with Pops to the memory of the late Pirate King.

"Twenty?"

"Yeah. I'll be... would be twenty-one in a couple of months."

_What the...?_ That just didn't add up. Had the marines got the wrong kid?

"That doesn't make sense."

"What do you-? Oh, yeah, the dates," Ace answered himself. "There's an explanation for that." He didn't elaborate.

"You gonna tell me?" As a pirate, Marco didn't usually bother with tact, and he was really curious about this.

Ace seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second before shrugging and shifting positions on the floor in front of Marco.

"I'm gonna die and you're gonna die, so why not?"

And so, Marco was treated to the story of how Gol D. Roger entrusted the welfare of his son to one Monkey D. Garp —Marco thought Roger could have asked Pops, too; it would have been better for Ace, seeing the current circumstances— of how Portgas D. Rouge managed to extend her pregnancy to twenty months through sheer willpower to save her baby and of how she died at childbirth, leaving Ace with Garp.

* * *

Ace had always been a very private person. He didn't trust others, and he kept his thoughts to himself. There were very few exceptions to that rule. In fact, he could count them with the fingers of one hand: there had been Sabo and, later in his life, Luffy; to some extent, he could count Gramps and even Dadan, though there had been many things he hadn't trusted either of them with. The second half of his life hadn't done anything to improve this trait, and nowadays it was a very strange occurrence that he started a conversation willingly; if he had to explain it, he would say that, as he would soon die, he saw no point in holding back his curiosity. It wasn't as if it could really make things worse.

"What's it like?" he asked, and Marco looked at him. "Being a pirate, I mean," he clarified.

"You don't know?" Marco asked, looking pointedly around. They may not be able to see any of the cells outside of their own, but Ace understood perfectly what he meant. He scoffed.

"I don't count what these assholes say. They mostly insult and threaten me or, if they're feeling generous, give me the gory details of their careers. I don't know much about being a pirate aside from gutting people and other more creative stuff."

Marco raised both eyebrows and shook his head.

"Of course. Should've expected they wouldn't like you any better than they do me."

A long time ago, in what now felt like another life, Ace would have been bothered by the roundabout reference to Roger; now he simply noted absentmindedly how Marco could dismiss so easily an entire level of prisoners inside of which were some of the most dangerous people in the world. As they said: like talking about the weather —not that anybody talked about the weather in here, but he remembered the expression. He didn't remember much about weather, though.

"It's… liberating." It took Ace a moment to realize Marco was actually answering his question. That was new. Only Gramps answered Ace's questions, and not always. He hadn't really expected an answer, but Ace wasn't the kind of person who didn't do things just because it was unlikely he would get what he wanted from them. "I don't know about other crews, I guess they're all different, but we're a family, and we like it. We do fight amongst ourselves, but it's good generally." When he said those last words, a shadow crossed Marco's eyes, and Ace had the impression he had thought of something that hadn't been good.

Ace didn't ask —he doubted he would receive an answer to a question that seemed so personal, and honestly he didn't care about it— but he did wonder if by family Marco meant anything like what he had shared with Sabo and Luffy. If it was, then that sounded like a good crew.

"I've heard a lot of comments about you guys being a family. They weren't nice." That was one of the favored ways to mock the Whitebeard Pirates around here, and it had bothered Ace at first to hear the scum down here mock what sounded to him like a family of choice. He had gotten used to it eventually, though, and now it was just one of many topics he ignored whenever the other inmates talked.

Instead of being annoyed, Marco chuckled.

"Oh, that's common. Whenever someone wants to insult us, that's one of the first things they mock. They don't seem to get it's not a good idea, no matter how many of them we beat up for it."

Ace was struck by how proud of his family Marco looked then.

* * *

"Well, I think I should be flattered," Marco commented flippantly, unable to hold back a smirk. Next to him in the cell, Ace snorted; outside of the cell, Magellan pressed his lips together, a small cloud of poison coming out of his nose, and Hannyabal was practically fuming at the blatant show of disrespect.

"You think this is a joke?!" Hannyabal yelled at him, indignation pouring out of every pore of his body as he leaned closer to the bars. Marco found the scene amusing and almost chuckled. If the guy wasn't so annoying, his attempt at superiority would be almost cute: everybody here knew that had Marco been free, Hannyabal would be cowering behind Magellan.

"Not really. I just thought you guys wouldn't want to overshadow your whole 'put-an-end-to-the-Pirate-King's-legacy' circus."

Magellan may be a feared man, especially inside the walls of Impel Down, but Marco couldn't find it in himself to feel intimidated by his glare.

"Your captain is as dangerous as Roger was, you are too much of a threat to be allowed to live for long."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Marco smiled pleasantly, just to be annoying, and decided to let the smile grow further when he noticed the gesture unnerved Hannyabal.

They had scheduled his execution for the same day as Ace's. He guessed the government didn't want to assemble the parade twice: the Shichibukai would most likely riot if they had to go to Marineford twice in a short period of time, and removing most of the strongest marines from their posts couldn't be easy either.

* * *

"Aren't you a little too calm?" Ace asked as soon as Hannyabal and Magellan had disappeared into the elevator that led out of level six.

Anyone who gave more of a fuck about what was supposed to be normal, Ace thought, would have been completely disturbed by Marco's calm demeanor. He was mostly just curious.

"You've just been told you have seven days of life left, most people would be panicking."

Marco grinned, and it was one of the most wrong expressions Ace had ever seen in this hellhole. Marco looked so carefree, maybe even happy, that it was nothing like what Ace had seen in here before. Not even Gramps, with all his laughter, grinned like that when he came to visit.

"It's not like they'll let me be executed." Ace had no problem guessing that 'they' were the Whitebeard Pirates.

Marco sounded so sure of his statement that Ace didn't argue with him, even though he thought that was unlikely to happen at best.

* * *

For all his calmness and security in the knowledge that his crew would come, Marco couldn't sleep. It didn't have anything to do with lingering doubts or nervousness, it was simply the fact that he was in enemy territory, and he couldn't force himself to lower his guard enough to fall asleep. Ace, snoring at the other side of the cell, obviously had gotten over that problem a long time ago —Marco didn't doubt he had had it, he was too tough not to, he had probably spent months staying awake until his body couldn't take it anymore. Marco guessed that, with his powers blocked by the kairoseki, the same would happen to him eventually.

He didn't care much, if he had to be honest. As soon as the chains were off, any ill effect exhaustion might have had on him would be regenerated.

Still, he tried to relax enough to be able to fall asleep: immediate recovery in the future didn't mean he wanted to experience the effects of exhaustion in the meantime. He knew, intellectually, that the guards wouldn't kill him —he was too important as a prisoner, and the government wanted to make an example out of him— and that the criminals around him —most of whom really wanted him dead— were as helpless as he was right now. That didn't prevent his haki from informing him he was surrounded by hostile presences. Many of which cursed in their sleep. Someone was even cackling madly.

His eyes went back to Ace. He was curled in on himself, and that —despite being a normal sleeping position— somehow looked wrong on him. Then again, most things about Ace looked wrong on him. He should sleep sprawled and occupying as much space as his body could manage, that was what really suited him; he was too skinny, he had the built to be muscular, and Marco had no doubt he would have been under different circumstances, but instead he had few muscles —no doubt as many as the living conditions allowed— and Marco could easily make out his ribs. With better light, he might even be able to count them. As he had noticed right away, Ace was deathly pale, and, though not short, Marco was sure that if Ace had had the chance to grow up under more favorable circumstances he would be taller than he was now.

It was frustrating, and just by looking at him Marco wanted to kill whoever had decided it was acceptable to imprison a thirteen year old who hadn't done any harm in level six of Impel Down for seven years before killing him. If Marco had anything to say about it, which he _had_, then Ace wasn't going to be executed in six days.

He had known him for less than a day, and yet he already liked him. Marco really wanted to see the man Ace would become outside of these walls.

* * *

Vice admiral Monkey D. Garp wasn't in a good mood. Granted, there was no way he could have been in a good mood when his oldest grandson was going to be executed for no reason in mere days, but he was in an even worse mood than he could have been had the circumstances been the slightest bit different.

And it all was because Sengoku refused to let him go to Impel Down.

Sengoku had been pissed when Garp had left three days ago without previous warning —his mood probably had something to do with the fact that when Garp came back he had discovered Marco the Phoenix had just been captured and everybody was rushing madly to fit the pirate's execution alongside Ace's— and now had ordered that freaking brat Sakazuki to ensure Garp didn't leave headquarters without permission again. Kuzan Garp would have been able to convince to let him leave for a while, even Borsalino would have been a better option, because Garp would have found a way to give him the slip at some point, but there was no way he would get away from Sakazuki without destroying half of headquarters in the process of knocking him out.

Now, Sengoku was even more stressed out than he had been the past two days, because Whitebeard had disappeared from their radar after sinking all twenty-three ships keeping tabs on him. Really, Sengoku shouldn't be surprised, as no amount of ships would be able to hold back against that crew without at the very least the three admirals on them. And even that was debatable.

As far as Garp was concerned, Sengoku deserved every single bit of stress and grief that came his way. If he and the damn Gorosei had agreed to Garp's idea of having Ace become a marine nothing of this would be happening. Sure, they would still be planning an execution, but they wouldn't be in such a hurry, Garp would actually be helping instead of making himself as much of a nuisance as possible and Sakazuki wouldn't have been relegated to watch him, and thus would have been able to help as well.

Garp looked out of the window of his office and wondered, not for the first time in the last hour, if he could sneak out when Sakazuki slept. Maybe if Sakazuki didn't have the uncanny ability to sleep at exactly the same time as Garp did.

* * *

Ace hated Impel Down. He really, _really_ hated Impel Down. It should be obvious, of course, this place was a prison, the one holding him to boot, but he felt he couldn't stress enough just how much he despised it.

It wasn't just that it was located at the bottom of the sea and no sun came in —which was a really depressing fact if he let himself think about it, but he didn't because he couldn't even remember how it felt like to have the sun warm his skin— or that the company in general very much sucked, and the cold and humidity of the place didn't help either —it was a miracle, really, that Ace had never fallen sick since he arrived here. What Ace hated the most here was the food, the lack there of and the pathetic quality of what passed as food in the prison.

Ace did not remember anymore what real food tasted like, he had forgotten a long time ago, but he did remember the shock, disappointment and even horror he had felt when he realized how much the food in this place sucked. It was a thought he had never allowed himself to let go of, because food had always been a very important thing with his brothers and he refused to forget that it was supposed to be good. It didn't matter that he didn't know anymore what 'good taste' was supposed to be like.

He stared morosely at the cracked plate —plates were often used as weapons here, and Ace suspected the only reason the guards, who were frequently the targets of flying pieces of pottery, still brought them was in hopes that the inmates would kill one another with them— and the sad chunk of moldy bread and bowl of watery soup on it. He had been here for years and still wasn't completely used to the stuff.

His eyes traveled next to the bucket of water that had been shoved into the cell along with the food. It was the more or less weekly water of always, no bigger nor accompanied by a second one despite the fact that the cell now held two prisoners.

Annoyed as he was by the thought that they would have to ration the water, Ace still downed what was left of the previous bucket and handed it over peacefully. He had once thrown a bucket at a guard, and had been left two days without water as punishment. He wasn't eager to repeat the experience.

"You know, I bet they did this on purpose."

Ace raised his head to look at Marco. He probably shouldn't have chuckled, after all there was no doubt the guard had done it out of spite and cruelty, but when said guard had pushed the meals they usually brought every two or three days through the bars, there had been two rations, and one had slid close to Marco, who, due to the ridiculous amount of chains holding him, couldn't reach it.

It wasn't nice to laugh, but the picture was somewhat comical, even more because Marco looked just as calm as he did most of the time.

"It tastes like shit," he told him.

"I'd guessed. I don't really want it, as soon as I'm out of these chains I'll recover from anything wrong I might've had."

Ace must be feeling especially rude today, because he scoffed.

"You still going on with that?"

It was a good thing he still hadn't touched his food, because he would've dropped it right then. Marco leveled a glare at him, and it was nothing like the ones directed at him by the other prisoners he could see during the trips to the bathroom —which were roughly four or five hours after they were fed. Those were murderous and promised horrible things. This one… wasn't. And yet, where the others were only annoying, Marco's glare was _scary_. It was out of sheer stubbornness that Ace didn't back away.

"I am not just 'going on with it', it _will_ happen. With you, the security is mostly for show and 'just in case', but why do you think they want to execute me at the same time?" He didn't give Ace time to answer. "Because, with me, it's not a possibility. It's a fact. The government knows the Whitebeard Pirates and all their allies will come, and it's going to be war."

The way Marco said it, a part of Ace actually believed him for the first time. He could see why Marco was a commander of the Whitebeard Pirates now: he had been so calm and laid back up until now that, though Ace knew who he was, he hadn't understood that the man sharing his cell was in truth one of the most powerful people in the New World. He was someone used to give orders and be obeyed, someone used to be listened to and taken seriously.

"But," he argued, because another part of him refused to believe him, "this is not just some marine base, it's the whole of the marines and the Shichibukai we're talking about."

Marco relaxed. He didn't smile or anything, but the dangerous look in his eyes softened.

"That would be a tough fight, I know. But it's not only my crew, it's also all our allies that will come," he repeated.

Ace fell silent, mulling over what he had been told, and Marco didn't add anything else.

It was a disconcerting concept. Even ignoring Hannyabal's frequent comments and jibes on the matter, Ace knew how strong the marines were; not only was Gramps a part of them, but he had made sure Ace knew. Ace knew a good deal about Sengoku —he had met the man once, even— and the admirals and vice admirals. Yet, wasn't Whitebeard the strongest man in the world? And Ace had heard enough about the crew in general to know the commanders and many of their allies shouldn't be taken lightly, either. If Marco was right, and Ace no longer doubted he was right that there would be a fight, he just wasn't sure about the result of said fight, then…

"Are they really going to come save you?"

"Us."

Ace's head snapped up to look at him so fast he felt dizzy for the barest of moments.

"What?"

"You don't think I'm going to just leave you there, do you, brat?"

Ace blinked, completely lost for words. He finally managed to repeat himself.

"What?"

Marco grinned, and that expression was something Ace _would_ expect from someone with the his reputation.

"What do you say, Ace? Want to leave the marines' show and come with me?"

Again, Ace just blinked. This turn in the conversation had caught him so off guard he couldn't process properly what he was hearing.

Marco chuckled.

"You don't have to answer me now, you have six days still. Do you want that?" he asked, gesturing to the food with his head. "You'll need as much strength as you can get."

Ace nodded numbly. He still wasn't sure of what was happening, but his body got so little sustenance that he couldn't refuse a second helping of even the shit they served here.

His brain was still reeling by the time all the food was consumed.

* * *

Ace had been silent for the remainder of the day, not that Marco could blame him given what they had talked about. He had no doubt a lot to think about: he had spent the last seven years of his life thinking he would only leave this place to die, after all. That didn't mean Marco wasn't bored. He had tuned in on the conversations going around in level six, but those too were boring —seriously, not many people would believe that two mass murderers had spent an entire hour debating which island had the best hot springs and reminiscing on mostly harmless trips— and the time had dragged on.

Saying the most interesting thing that had happened since the conversation had been the bathroom trip explained it all. It was amusing to see how paranoid the guards were about him —though walking with so many chains was a little troublesome, Marco refused to show it— and the other guy that had been escorted at the same time than him had tried to threaten him. The man, whose face Marco didn't remember, had backed off as soon as Marco had directed at him one of the smirks that he usually reserved for the battlefield, and that at the same time had put the guards more on edge. Really, it wasn't as if Marco had any intentions of escaping. Yet.

Now it was probably night again, because most people were asleep. Ace wasn't, he was just lying on the floor and staring at the stone ceiling, in much the same way he had been doing for the last few hours, and Marco was making another attempt at trying to sleep. He was having more luck than yesterday at relaxing, and hoped that at this rate he could get a few hours of sleep —if not today, maybe tomorrow. He suspected it was because he was in a better mood: the conversation, despite how it had started, had cheered him up considerably. Ace hadn't lashed out, and if he was anything like his father or adoptive grandfather that meant he might agree to his offer and save them all a lot of trouble and struggling.

* * *

Ace wasn't sure if he wanted to believe Marco or not. Sure, that didn't change the fact that he _did_ believe him, he found it increasingly difficult not to; after all, Marco was the Whitebeard Pirates' first mate, which meant that —aside from the captain himself— he was the person who knew with the most accuracy what his crew would do. But believing there would be an attack and believing it would be successful were two different things. Believing the second meant having hope, and Ace wasn't sure if he wanted to go back to that: he had abandoned it years ago, when it became clear that not even Gramps and all the weight his name carried would be able to do anything to save him.

Of course, if the hope didn't lead anywhere it wouldn't matter much because he would die, but that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt all the same to realize he had hoped in vain before said death.

And then, Ace realized that if he was weighing all the inconveniences of hoping it was because a part of him already hoped that Marco was right about everything, and the other was afraid that he wasn't.

"Fuck."

He stood up, suddenly feeling restless. He hadn't done much of anything since Gramps had told him about his upcoming execution, but now he felt the need to just _move_.

"Something wrong?"

Ace turned around and glared at Marco, overcome by an emotion he had thought dead years ago.

"This is your fault," he spat out, the anger he had felt for so many years as a child settling back in as if it had never been gone. "I had accepted it. I'd known for years that I would die and had come to terms with it. Roger's son shouldn't be allowed to live, I've heard that all my life. But now you appear out of nowhere and start spouting shit about rescues and getting out of here alive, and I fucking _believe you_!" he snarled, barely avoiding yelling at him. Years of being here had conditioned him to avoid attracting attention from the other prisoners whenever possible, and he did it unconsciously now.

Marco stared at him, and stayed silent for so long that Ace —fists clenched and still glaring at the man— started to think he wouldn't answer. Finally, he spoke.

"Well, I'm not sorry." That answer was not what Ace had expected. To be honest, he wasn't sure what he _had_ been expecting, but a part of him had wanted Marco to get angry, argue with him. He was serious, sure, but he was most definitely not angry. "You don't deserve to die, Ace, whatever the damn World Government insists on saying about it."

And, again, Ace was taken aback. There had been so few people in his life who shared that thought that he didn't know how to react to it. And all of those people had been family in some way —Makino and the mayor had liked him to an extent, but they hadn't known who he really was. Hearing it from someone he had no relation to was too disconcerting for him to come up with a way to respond.

Instead, he changed the topic.

"I'm gonna train. I need to move."

"Want some help?"

Ace gave him an incredulous look.

"You're chained to the wall."

Marco smiled and, though it was a pleasant enough expression, there was something definitely annoying about it.

"I don't need to move to criticize you."

"Oh, thank you." Ace rolled his eyes and walked to the center of the cell.

He didn't tell Marco to shut up, and instead actually listened to his advice. He was a surprisingly good instructor.

* * *

The remaining thirteen commanders of the Whitebeard Pirates were assembled around the captain's chair, some sitting in chairs, others occupying various crates and a few —namely Jozu and Namur— sitting on the floor. Izo, however, was standing, pacing restlessly across the expanse of the deck they had taken up for their strategy meeting.

"Most of the marines are assembled already," Curiel, who was the one receiving all the reports from the allies who were monitoring the marines' movements, said. "The only ones to be moved now are the Shichibukai. They're still at Mariejois, waiting for Boa Hancock to arrive."

"She's going?" Haruta asked, whistling. "I wasn't expecting that."

"I think the marines weren't, either," commented Vista. He was been in charge of the group listening in to the marines' communications, and the fact that Hancock wasn't answering to the repeated summons had been one of the main topics in said conversations for days, according to him.

"Any idea when she will arrive?" Pops, who had remained silent thus far, asked.

"Late in the morning the day before the execution," Vista answered, pulling his moustache between thumb and index finger.

"Damn, that's close," Namur muttered, and Izo had to agree. They would have to move fast, if they wanted everything to go according to plan.

* * *

It had been a pleasant enough day, Marco reflected, even more if he compared it to what a day in Impel Down was rumored to be like. Ace was a really good fighter for someone who had been here for so long —he had told him he used to train a lot as a kid, and also that his grandfather gave him some tips whenever he came to visit— and Marco suspected that he could give a run for their money to a good number of pirates he knew, many residents of the prison included.

It hadn't been much of a surprise to discover —by accident when Ace threw a kick a little stronger than needed and caused a dent on the wall— that Ace was a haki user, and he had admitted that learning how to control it had helped him pass a good deal of time without going crazy in this place.

Things had gone a little south when some of their neighbors caught on to what they were doing and spread the word, resulting in the entire level six of Impel Down shouting taunts and slurs at them. Ace hadn't stayed silent, and proved he possessed a vocabulary as varied and colorful as any self-respecting pirate. Marco had decided to join in this time, and it turned out that reminding people of their humiliating defeats worked wonders to shut them up.

Now it was night again, and Marco was having a serious argument with his body because he was getting past the point of just being tired, something he could ignore easily enough, and moving into exhaustion.

* * *

"Marco." The moment the name was out Ace realized this was the first time he had used it out loud.

"Yes?"

"Will your crew care?"

Marco made an inquiring noise that let Ace known he hadn't understood what he meant. Ace wasn't surprised: Marco looked tired, and the bags under his eyes were getting scary. He knew Marco hadn't slept at all, something that was fairly common amongst the prisoners —though admittedly most of them lost the battle to exhaustion after the second night.

"About me. Weren't you enemies of Roger?"

"No," Marco answered immediately. "They won't care, I mean. We were sort of Roger's enemies, that's true, but probably not how you think. Rivals, more than enemies. That won't matter: we are outcasts, many people in the crew weren't wanted wherever they came from. If anybody says anything about you, they'll be asking for it whenever something happens to them."

Ace guessed Marco didn't mean anything lethal by that, he remembered hearing that the only truly ironclad rule in Whitebeard's ship was that it was forbidden to kill a crewmate.

"Will you join us?" Marco asked, startling him.

"… I don't know."

It was something he hadn't even considered, but Marco had asked it as if there would be no problem if he wanted to join. But Ace didn't want to think about it, because the dream of becoming a pirate wasn't as dead as it should have been by now, and that was a thought he wasn't sure he would be able to deal with.

* * *

"You should sleep," Ace said later that day, once it had become clear that today wasn't going to be a food day —by his estimation, up on the surface it was probably night already. He didn't care too much: he was doing better than usual, and he had Marco to thank for that. Marco, who didn't look all that well himself. Aside from the obvious lack of sleep, Ace now realized, he must be feeling the effects of hunger just like anybody else in his position would, without his devil fruit powers to block them.

"I've tried, believe me."

"You should try again, then. I'll wake you up if anybody comes into the level," he added impulsively. They both knew that wasn't necessary: Marco was a haki user, and as such he would wake up the moment a new and hostile presence approached, just like Ace did. Still, Marco smiled at him.

"Thanks."

"Just try to sleep. Think of somewhere where you like to do it." Ace had used that technique at first, remembering the little tree house he had built with his brothers and, though it had been a bittersweet memory, it had helped him fall asleep after the first few nights of stubborn wakefulness.

* * *

It had taken a while, but finally the memory of the deck chair he placed next to Pops' chair whenever he wanted to sleep without being interrupted —Pops made sure no one bothered him while he was there— had helped Marco fall asleep, and when he woke up his inner clock informed him it had been longer than he usually slept. He was getting used to be here, and if he had to hazard a guess, he would say it was morning of the next day.

His eyes found Ace, and Marco chuckled at the sight. It was obvious by his position that sleeping hadn't been a conscious decision on Ace's part, and the result was fairly amusing. He must have been originally sitting up against the wall, but now his upper body had drooped to one side, hips twisted awkwardly as his legs didn't seem to have moved much, a shoulder pressed in what looked to be a painful manner to the ground and his face, mostly covered from view by matted black hair, seemed to be pressed against the stone ground as well.

Marco felt a group of presences approaching that could only be coming down using the elevator, and Ace bolted awake. He had sat up before his eyes were completely awake, and absently rubbed the drool off his face with the heel of a hand.

There was no trace that he had been sleeping left on Ace's face, a contrast to the drowsy behavior Marco had witnessed the previous times he had seen him wake up. It was admirable that he could be on guard so fast, but at the same time it was sad because the reaction had obviously been developed out of necessity.

Ace looked at him.

"Better?" he asked in a hushed tone that probably wasn't necessary —the elevator's doors were still closed and all other prisoners who could feel the guards approaching had started yelling already, soon followed by the ones who couldn't feel them— but Marco appreciated that Ace made the effort to try to keep his previous weakness a secret.

He nodded and smiled at him.

It was again the same bleak food as the other day —just like Ace had predicted, no water this time, so it was a good thing they still had over half of it left— and once more the guard made sure Marco's ration stopped at a distance he would have been able to reach if he had had even one arm free. Marco raised an unimpressed eyebrow, letting the man know he wasn't bothered by such petty things. The guard just smirked mockingly at him and left after pushing Ace's food into the cell as well.

"Asshole," Ace muttered after the guard left. "If you were free, that guy would've pissed himself."

"I know." They heard the elevator's doors close again behind the guards and Marco smirked. "Imagine his reaction when I'm free again?"

Ace, who had just bitten into his stale bread, chocked and barely managed to swallow it between the coughing fit that followed. Marco chuckled unsympathetically and Ace glared at him.

"Thanks for that, bastard," Ace said as soon as he could speak again.

"You're welcome," Marco answered, amused still.

Ace's glare remained on him for a full minute before his gaze lowered to the pirate's food. His eyes lost a good portion of their fire then.

"I could help you with that," he offered somewhat awkwardly.

"No." Marco shook his head. "It's yours."

"Oh, come on," Ace argued." I don't care about your powers. You're a normal human for now, you've got to be hungry as hell."

That was true, this was the fifth day he had been here, and his stomach had been complaining —though luckily it wasn't very noisy about it, but it hurt, and Marco wasn't used to that— but it wasn't really important.

"That doesn't matter. I'm used to eating a lot more than you, that amount of food won't make a difference for me, and either way I'll be as good as new once these chains are gone. You, however, are used to very little food, and an extra ration _will _make a difference."

Ace crossed his arms and glared mutinously at him.

"You're a stubborn bastard."

"No, I'm being logical. Just hand me some water, alright? I'll be fine," he insisted, using his best reassuring voice, the one he had perfected by trying to calm or comfort distressed crewmates.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part II**

Ace had been thinking these past few days.

Maybe it was his impending execution, or maybe it was because of everything Marco had said, but he had been thinking about the past more than he usually allowed himself to. He didn't like to think about the past, because that always inevitably led to thinking about the last time he had seen Luffy. The horrible guilt that had eaten at him that entire day was one of the few feelings of which the memory hadn't diminished with time, and it was threatening to engulf him once more.

It had been a normal day, at least as far as Luffy had been concerned, only that at the end of it he and Gramps had left for a special training session. The only one who had believed Ace would come back after that night had been Luffy.

He shook his head, because he wasn't going to let his mind go down that path again, and instead concentrated on the small thought that had been nagging at him ever since Marco had arrived into the cell. It was a small possibility, but every passing moment increased his need to see if it would get him anywhere.

He hadn't realized he had been staring at Marco until he spoke.

"What is it, brat?"

Ace was momentarily startled before he collected himself.

"I wanted to ask you something," he started tentatively. He may have asked Marco a couple of questions already, but he still felt strange doing so, and this one was far more important than all the others put together.

"Go ahead."

He really hoped Marco wouldn't decide to stop answering his questions now.

Ace was about to just ask when he decided that maybe he could explain himself a little. He wasn't sure why, but he wanted to talk about this with someone. Perhaps it was because he never really had talked about it with someone other than Gramps, and even then it was in short and bitter bouts of conversation that led to uncomfortable, guilty silences.

"I have a little brother," he began, speaking in a low voice that would ensure only Marco would be able to hear him. "He's a crazy little shit, really." He smiled, remembering all the ridiculous situations Luffy always managed to get himself into. "We had always wanted to become pirates, though for obvious reasons I couldn't do it." Marco raised his eyebrows at this revelation, but didn't say anything. "I know he did it, a few months ago. Gramps told me, but he hasn't told me much else. Man, he was _pissed_ when he came to see me that day. Ranted for a whole hour at least."

Ace remembered Gramps hadn't had Luffy's wanted poster, he had ripped it to shreds as soon as he had seen it and headed out for Impel Down. Ace had wanted to ask him to bring it next time, but in the end hadn't. He wasn't a coward, but he wasn't sure either he would be able to deal with seeing Luffy's face now. Most of the time, Ace told himself he didn't ask his grandfather to bring it because he doubted he would do it, but today he felt unusually sincere even with himself.

"Whenever I ask Gramps about him," Ace continued, "he gets all mad and stressed, and refuses to tell me much. I only know my brother's bounty has increased a couple of times and that Sengoku has been yelling at Gramps more than usual because of him, but that's about it."

"You want to know if I can tell you anything about him?" Marco guessed, and Ace nodded. "What's his name?"

"Luffy. Monkey D. Luffy."

A smile, not really surprised, stretched Marco's lips, and Ace grinned, feeling hope bloom in his chest.

"You know him?"

"_Everyone_ knows him," Marco answered, "he's one of the big time rookies. That kid has pulled some seriously crazy stunts."

"Tell me everything," Ace asked, not caring that he sounded a little bit desperate. This was the first real opportunity he had to learn anything about his brother's career as a pirate, and he was too excited to care about anything else. And Luffy was famous, so famous that freaking _Marco the Phoenix_ knew about him. Ace was the proudest older brother in the world in that moment.

"I checked on him not too long ago, actually, after he did one of the craziest things I've heard of in years," Marco started, and Ace leaned forward in anticipation, his free foot bouncing in his excitement. "He started as a thirty million bounty in East Blue, which didn't really catch my attention then: that sum is a lot for that sea, true, but it's nothing extraordinary anywhere else. When I looked into it, I saw he earned it after beating all the strongest pirates there. Some weeks later, his bounty was raised to one hundred million, and his first mate —a swordsman, I don't remember his name, sorry— got a bounty as well. He caught my attention then because there was no story in the newspaper explaining that rise in price, and one doesn't reach that sum without a good reason, much less a rookie in the first half of the Grand Line. That only happens when the explanation behind the bounty would make the government look bad."

Ace was absorbing every word Marco spoke. He could easily guess Luffy would have laughed like crazy, maybe thrown a party, at getting a price on his head. He couldn't imagine it, though, because he didn't remember Luffy's face clearly anymore. Dark hair, stupidly wide grin and a scar under his left eye, sure, but everything else was blurred out. He pushed that thought aside, now was time to learn about his brother, not get depressed.

"Do you have any theories about that?" he asked. Marco seemed the kind of guy who didn't like to leave a mystery unsolved.

"Maybe," Marco grinned. "He later went to Water 7, which means there are only a couple of routes he could have taken when he entered the Grand Line. In one of them there is a kingdom named Alabasta, where around the time your brother might have been there —and it coincides when the time his bounty was raised as well— Crocodile lost his position as a Shichibukai. The official story is that a marine caught him, which could be of course, but that's an idea."

Ace frowned, mulling over Marco's words. Crocodile had arrived some weeks ago: he was a strange guy, at least for level six standards. He didn't particularly hate Ace —Crocodile hadn't insulted him when he was told who his father was, contrary to what most other newcomers did; it had been a nice change— but it had become clear early on that he did hold a serious grudge against Whitebeard.

"What's Luffy's epithet?" he asked.

"Strawhat Luffy." Well, no surprise there. The government guys weren't the most imaginative bunch, and Ace had never doubted that Luffy would hold onto his straw hat over almost anything else. It was his most valued treasure, after all, and he had promised to return it to the man who gave it to him someday.

"Okay," Ace said, nodding. He took a deep breath. "Oi, Crocodile!" he shouted, and that earned startled reactions from the other prisoners. Ace wasn't in the habit of starting conversations with anyone or drawing attention to himself. "Was it Strawhat Luffy who kicked your ass?!"

Whispers and louder conversations had started all over the place, but they didn't prevent Ace from hearing Crocodile's laughter. He knew the former Shichibukai was in one of the closer cells.

"How did you guess?" The question was enough of an answer to Ace.

All over the place, pirates had begun to ask who Luffy was, and soon it had become clear no one knew the name.

"I didn't. Marco did," Ace managed to answer before things outside spiraled into a long round of mocking comments aimed at Crocodile for being defeated by a rookie.

Ace didn't care, too busy grinning like a lunatic because Luffy had beaten a _Shichibukai_. Damn, his little brother had become strong.

Marco chuckled.

"There's something else."

"Tell me," Ace asked eagerly.

"A couple of weeks ago, the Strawhat Pirates successfully assaulted Enies Lobby to rescue a captured crewmember. The island was razed to the ground during the attack —but I'm not certain which side did that— and the entire crew escaped alive. Your brother's current bounty is three hundred million beli, and his entire crew has a price on their heads."

Ace was left speechless.

* * *

"What's sex like?" The question was so sudden that it took Ace a moment to realize he had been the one to ask it.

"What?" Apparently, Marco wasn't any less surprised than Ace himself was.

"Sex," he repeated.

It was something he had been wondering about for years now, even before his imprisonment. It wasn't strange for a boy of twelve or thirteen to start thinking about it, and though his curiosity had vanished somewhat after he was put in this cell, it hadn't really disappeared. Or, more precisely, it had, for a while, back when some other prisoners decided that using the prospect of rape to threaten Roger's virgin kid would be fun, but the curiosity had resurfaced once Ace had convinced himself that everybody around him were scumbags and that what they said _wasn't _the same sex he had been hearing about before, back at Dawn Island.

He had never had much information to go on —sadly, mostly what little information about not forced relations he gleaned from the conversations around— but he had always possessed a good imagination and it had helped him greatly these last few years.

As many other things, sex was one of those foreign concepts he always had heard about, but had known he would never be able to experience himself. Now, however, he might be able to experience it, and that thought alone had been enough to bring his curiosity back to the forefront of his mind. Probably not the most pressing thought he should be having in this situation, but Ace thought he could blame his hormones for it —twenty was still a valid age to do so, as far as he had heard.

Marco, to his credit, didn't laugh or look at him incredulously. Once, not long after his arrival to the prison and before he decided there was no one worth anything in level six, Ace had asked the other prisoners about it, interrupting what might have been either a conversation or a boasting competition of sexual skills, and had soon come to regret it.

"I can't explain," Marco answered after a minute of silence, and Ace made a face.

"Really?" He asked, disappointed. Marco shook his head. "Can't you try, at least?"

Another shake of the head.

"Sex is not a set process, and it's too much about sensations, emotions in some cases, to describe easily."

"Oh," Ace did his best not to sound or appear too disappointed by the answer. Then an idea crossed his mind and he almost grinned. "Show me, then."

"What?" This time Marco sounded even more disconcerted than before.

Ace stood up, pushing against the wall he had been leaning onto, and approached Marco, crouching before him.

"Show me. I know you can't move, what with being chained to the wall and all that, but I can, so if you tell me what to do—"

"_No_." Ace blinked, taken aback by the strength behind that single word.

"What? Why not?"

Marco sighed, and Ace thought he would have rubbed the bridge of his nose if he had been capable of it.

"_Ace…_" Marco sighed a second time, exasperation clear in the gesture, "I am not going to fuck you —or let you fuck yourself on me— in this hellhole two days before our scheduled execution."

Ace tilted his head to the side because, really? That was Marco's reason? Ace knew most prisoners here would gladly fuck with one another if they were in the same cell. Hell, maybe Ace himself, in one of his weaker moments, would have fallen for it, even if it was with someone nowhere as attractive as Marco.

"Why not?" he asked again.

A third sigh.

"I know morals aren't common here, but still…" he muttered under his breath, and Ace knew he wouldn't have been able to hear it if he hadn't been so close to Marco. "Ace," he spoke, louder this time, "contrary to most people here, I have some self-respect —and _you _should have it for yourself, too— as well as respect for others, and I refuse to take advantage of you in this situation, when you might regret it once we are out of this fucking place."

"I won't regret it," Ace assured, still mostly not seeing the point. If he had been feeling especially weak, or scared —not that he ever _was_ scared, mind you— or worried about the execution and simply wanted to have some sexual experience before his death, then he would be able to understand Marco's refusal. But the point was that he _wasn't_. Sure, the idea hadn't occurred to him before, but that was because he had had a lot of things in his mind lately. But, once he had thought about it, he realized that Marco was _really_ hot, and he liked him. Ace didn't like many people.

A sceptical eyebrow went up —and wasn't it amazing Ace was able to interpret the expression in under a week of knowing one another? The wonders of forced cohabitation every moment of the day— and he decided to elaborate.

"You're hot, for starters," he said, and continued before the eyebrow could do more than twitch. "No, really. I may have been thirteen when I got here, but I already knew I liked both guys and girls by then, and you _are_ hot." He added a deliberate look at Marco's abs here. Ace may not have had much practice with conversations, but he had learned a lot about meaningful looks in his life. They were the best option when neither part was willing to put something to words. "And, okay, so _maybe_ I'm kind of desperate, but you can't blame me for that. I've been wanting to do _something _for years. It's no fun being a virgin at twenty." The mockery he received for it wasn't nice, either, and even less were the _offers_ that most often than not accompanied said mockery.

"I'm not doing it," Marco said before Ace could continue, taking the silence that short thought elicited as his chance to cut in, "so stop insisting."

"Fuck, you're stubborn," Ace stated, and crossed his arms.

Marco shrugged as best as he could in his position, which was more than Ace would have thought possible.

"Let's agree on something," he proposed. "When we get out of here, if you still want it, bring it up again. _Then_ I will gladly fuck you."

Ace stared at Marco, Marco's lips twitched into an almost smirk. Ace sighed.

"Do you promise?"

"You have my word."

Ace nodded, understanding that he wasn't going to get anything better from him.

"I'll hold you to it, then," and, just because he could and he was a teeny little bit annoyed, he added, "old man."

Marco's look after that told him he was most likely going to regret that comment. Ace didn't care.

* * *

Ace had fallen asleep easily enough that night, but Marco was once more having trouble to follow. Not because he was too much on alert to sleep, he had finally gotten the hang of it after last night, but because of the conversation they had had not even an hour ago. It had caught him so off guard he hadn't known how to react, and a treacherous part of his mind had wanted to accept —he may be chained to the wall, but he was still perfectly capable of bringing Ace to orgasm with only his mouth and his hips. Luckily, he had reacted in time before he could agree to something he would regret later.

Despite being a pirate, Marco _did_ have some morals, and he didn't care what Ace did or said: he wasn't going to fuck him in their current circumstances. Maybe if Ace wasn't a virgin he would, but Marco knew how some people got about their virginity. It wasn't something he wanted hanging in his conscience if, once free from this prison, Ace started to have second thoughts.

Now, if Ace took up his offer once they were out of here, that would be an entirely different story. It was true that Ace was unhealthily skinny and needed exposure to the sun, but those were things Marco had already decided he would remedy as soon as they left here. He knew, there wasn't room for any doubt about it, that the crew must have stocked up on _a lot_ of food, prepared for the prospect of a party once everything was over, and Marco planned on feeding Ace as much as his stomach could manage without him getting sick.

After that, if Ace still wanted to, then Marco's bed was big enough for two.

* * *

Monkey D. Luffy wasn't a man known for his stealth or ability to remain silent, much less to follow a plan. Anybody who had met him, most notoriously his crew, would mark those as some of the traits that could never be used to define him. And yet, in this very moment, as he clung to Boa Hancock's body inside her clothes, he did his best to use all of those traits. While she walked, acting as if nothing was out of place, into the great prison of Impel Down, Luffy put every single effort on not moving, not making any noise and going completely unnoticed by the thousands of marines and guards stationed here.

Because here, somewhere deep down in this huge jail, was his brother, Portgas D. Ace.

Ace, the brother he had thought dead for seven years now. The brother _Gramps_ had told him had died in an accident seven years ago when both grandfather and grandson had gone on a training trip. Gramps had never hinted at anything other than the story he had told him so long ago —and had Luffy cried, then, even more than when Sabo died, because then there wasn't Ace to be with him, to help him get through it and to direct his sadness to something else— not even when Luffy had met Gramps again barely weeks ago in Water Seven.

Luffy would beat up Gramps for this someday, he would beat him so hard that he would never be called a hero again by anyone. But, for now, he wasn't going to think about Gramps. No, now all his thoughts were for Ace, who was somewhere in this underwater building, alone. _Alive._

Luffy was going to get Ace out of here, he would beat every single person standing in his way if he had to. Then he would take his brother to eat somewhere good —because he knew the government's food had to suck, and Ace deserved good food— and would tell him everything about his adventures, about his crew and about all he had seen and experienced since he became a pirate. And then he would offer Ace to join his crew.

Yes, because Ace hadn't had the chance to create his own crew, but he had always wanted to be a pirate. And Luffy would make damn sure that his brother became one.

Ace's dream, his biggest dream, even more than becoming a pirate, had always been to be freer than anyone else in the world. For years, Luffy had thought Ace had lost the chance to fulfill it, but now he knew he hadn't, not really. Ace may not be free right now, but Luffy would do everything in his power to make sure that he _would_ be.

For now, that meant escaping the full body check Hancock would have to go through. It was a good thing she was so strong.

* * *

Getting into Impel Down had been easy.

Luffy had thought he would have to run and pray the guards didn't see him, but Hancock had fixed it using her powers and now he was one floor down in the prison, in some cavern-like space full of cells. Once he was inside —and the guards that had opened the door had disappeared from sight— Luffy landed on the walkway before the upper row of cells and started to run.

He didn't go far, however, before a prisoner called to him. Luffy stopped. He was going to simply leave when he thought better of it. He didn't know where he had to go, only that —as Hancock had told him— it would have to be down, so he could as well ask for some directions.

Ignoring the questions he was being asked —mostly what he was doing here and why was he outside of a cell— Luffy asked a question of his own.

"Do you know where Ace is?"

That made the prisoners stop talking.

"Ace? Who's that?" the one who had originally stopped him asked.

"Dunno, never heard that name," said the man next to him.

"Oh, right, you wouldn't know his name," Luffy realized. Ace wasn't a famous pirate, after all. "The guy who's gonna be executed, Roger's son."

They did know who _that _was, but that didn't mean they were of any help. They started laughing, much in the same way as people had done at the notion of Roger having a son when Ace had been young —he had told Luffy about it, and about how he had beat anyone who had laughed and said that he should die. When Luffy said he wanted to save him, some guy said to leave him alone, that Ace deserved to die. Luffy punched him through the bars, because that was what Ace would have done, and the guy crashed into the wall at the other end of the cell. The other prisoners stopped laughing to stare at him.

"Do you know where Ace is, or not?" Luffy asked them again.

"Well…" the men stared at one another. "He would be on level five, wouldn't he? That's where they send all the criminals with over a hundred million on their heads."

"Yeah," another agreed. "I don't know what the guy's bounty is, but he's got to be dangerous if he's Roger's son."

That was what Hancock had said —Ace didn't have a bounty, but the government thought he was dangerous— but Luffy needed more information than that. Before he could ask how to get to level five, however, one of the men spoke again.

"That's totally impossible!" he exclaimed. "Instead, why don't you go to the jailer's room and steal the key for us?"

The other prisoners began to agree and Luffy was going to ask them if they knew how to get to level five or not —he was in a hurry, after all— when a scream cut through all the voices.

Before Luffy could really process what was going on, everybody was screaming and he found himself running from some weird beings along with the guy they had been pursuing.

"WHAAAT?! STRAWHAT?! WHY ARE YOU HERE?!" said person screamed and, turning his head to look, Luffy recognized him.

"Oh, it's you, Buggy," he said, still running.

"HEY! DON'T MAKE FUN OF ME!" Buggy, still as weird as ever it seemed, yelled again. "You're conceited as always! I didn't know you had got caught, too!"

"I entered by my own. I didn't get caught," Luffy explained. He had the feeling he would have to explain that more times today. To Ace, too. Man, he wasn't looking forward to the scolding that would earn him. Or, well, he _was_, because it would be _Ace_ the one to scold him. Luffy would gladly get his ass kicked —he wondered if Ace would still be able to beat him as easily as when they were kids— because that would mean Ace was with him.

"WHO IS IDIOTIC ENOUGH TO GET INTO A PRISON BY HIMSELF?!"

Buggy was as much of an idiot as always, it seemed, still talking to himself and all that. Luffy didn't mind, not usually, except that today having him yelling all over the place really didn't help his plan.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ALL TO YOURSELF?!" Luffy yelled back. "I PROMISED I WOULDN'T MAKE RUCKUS, BUT YOU BROUGHT ME INTO THIS!" He hoped the guards wouldn't realize Hancock had helped him get in. He didn't want to get her in trouble after everything she had done for him.

They argued, they always argued when they met, now that Luffy thought about it, but it was fine, because then Luffy realized a very important fact. He grinned.

"I'm in a hurry. And I already made a ruckus anyway." And that made things better, because it meant he didn't have to run from the annoying thingy gorilla guards or try to go unnoticed. That had sounded difficult, what with all the den den mushi and everything around the place.

"That is what I hate about you and that redhead. Always going ahead no matter what…" Buggy said, not yelling anymore, and that —though Luffy wasn't paying all that much attention to him— was good to hear. It always cheered Luffy up to be compared to Shanks. "Alright, got it. I just gotta do it, right?" Buggy muttered, agreeing to Luffy's new idea.

"LET'S CHANGE THE PLAN TO A BIG UPROAR!" Buggy yelled as they both turned to attack the guards, Luffy agreeing just as loudly.

* * *

"YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR BROTHER?!" Buggy yelled, again, once the guards were down. These guards had been kind of strong, and it would be a problem if they all were like that. Luffy didn't have that much time to waste here. "Shhh, they'll find us," Buggy then added, as if he wasn't one raising his voice all the time.

"You're the one who was yelling," Luffy pointed out.

"Who's your brother, anyway?" Buggy asked after, _again_, yelling at some prisoners to shut up. The prisoners had started to ask to be let out of their cells again once the guards were down.

"His name's Ace, and he's gonna be executed tomorrow if I don't save him."

"Executed? But the ones who'll be executed tomorrow are Marco the Phoenix and the Pirate King's son."

"That's Ace," Luffy said, grinning, and he was going to punch Buggy if he laughed or said anything bad about his brother.

Buggy didn't laugh. It was weird, Buggy laughed at everything, but instead he just stared at him, blinking.

"You want to save Gol D. Roger's son?" he asked again.

Luffy nodded.

"I want to go to level five. That's where Ace is, right?"

"How should I know?!" And Buggy was back to yelling. At least it wasn't so loud this time. "If you wanna go, then go on your own! Do you think we're friends or something?! I'm not going somewhere that dangerous!" Buggy started to walk away. "Later. If you're not coming with me, then I'm escaping on my own."

"Even though there are ten warships outside?" Luffy had seen them from the cabin where he and Hancock had been back on the marine ship. He had thought they would be a problem, but he would deal with them later. "Can you really escape?"

Buggy paused, and started muttering to himself. Luffy caught something about a beard. Weird. Whatever, Luffy didn't have the time to spare for this.

"Guess I'll have to ask someone else…" he thought aloud, looking around. He turned to Buggy. "Well, see you later! Good luck escaping!"

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, STRAWHAT!" Buggy, suddenly in Luffy's face, yelled, grabbing him by the shoulders.

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!" Luffy yelled back, getting annoyed at him already.

"THERE THEY ARE!" Right then the guards found them again.

"THEY FOUND US!"

"WHY ARE YOU YELLING?!"

They had to run again, but this time around Buggy was clinging to Luffy's arm, the one with the band he had gotten back in Thriller Bark.

"H-Hey… that armband! I-It's amazing!" Buggy said. "Hand it over!"

"What's with you all of a sudden?!" Luffy would have punched him if they weren't busy running. "I got this from Nami," he added. And it was weird, getting anything for free from Nami.

"I'll tell you how to get to where Ace is!" Buggy exclaimed.

"Really?!" Luffy grinned.

"In return, will you give me the armband?!"

"Sure!"

And, just like that, Luffy had found a guide.

* * *

Impel Down was weird. That was a conclusion Luffy had reached pretty soon. First it was the gorilla guards, then level two was full of weird monsters —like the basilisk Luffy had smashed into the guards' room, or the human eating strange lions— but at least now he had another guide, one that actually knew how to get to level three. Which apparently Buggy didn't.

His new guide was Three, the annoying guy from Baroque Works Luffy had beat back in the island of the giants. It seemed he was bound to meet people he already knew today. Luffy hadn't liked Three at all when he had first met him, but he knew how to get him closer to Ace and for that alone Luffy already liked him.

Luffy had had to explain about Ace again —while they ran from the human-faced lions who knew how to speak— but at least Three hadn't said anything about Ace, and was taking him to the stairs.

Or, well, they would go to the stairs once Luffy beat the old guy-faced giant lion that Three said was the guardian of the staircase. A Sphinx, Three called it.

Or maybe he wouldn't have to.

For some reason, Three had created a lot of copies of himself, and the beast was playing to smash them. It was fun, so Luffy started to point them to it. The monster's hits —and that thing was _strong_, Luffy would have loved to fight it properly if he had had the time— broke the floor, and they fell all the way down to level three.

Things were going better and faster than Luffy had expected they would.

* * *

Sengoku wasn't paid enough for this. He _really_ wasn't paid enough for this.

He had been counting on Whitebeard pulling something to free Marco the Phoenix, most likely involving a violent and heavy in casualties attack on Marine Headquarters hours before the scheduled execution. He hadn't counted on that damned brat Monkey D. Luffy charging straight into Impel Down to rescue the brother he had thought dead for seven years.

Garp, who had been even more annoying than usual this past week for not being allowed to visit his other grandson in Impel Down, was currently almost rolling on the floor with laughter, a half-eaten cookie still in his mouth, while Sakazuki glared at him with his deadliest and most impressive glower. A glower that didn't have any effect on Garp, of course.

As soon as the news of the intrusion had arrived, Sengoku had told the disconcerted prison guards about the reason behind it. There was no need to send in reinforcements, and the Strawhat brat didn't have any real chances of reaching, much less freeing, his brother. All that may be true, but it didn't make the situation any less stressing.

That fucking family would be the death of him.

And Garp was still laughing.

* * *

For a moment there, it had seemed like things were going to go all south. They had reached level three —which was great— but had been captured because, it seemed, the guards had been waiting for them. Then the weird giant lion that had fallen down with them had woken up and broke the net where Luffy, Buggy and Three had been trapped with it. Buggy and Three had decided to head back up —probably to try to escape— which was a pity because they had helped him a lot, but it couldn't be helped.

Luffy's aim was to go down, and for that he had to escape the lion, the gorilla guards from level one that were down here now and all the other guards with them. That and find the way down to level four, as Three had told him the stairs only went to level three.

* * *

When Marco woke up, he hadn't got nearly enough sleep for his slowly weakening body. Still, he wasn't the only one awake, as the presences he could clearly feel coming down in the elevator had drawn Ace's attention as well. They shared a look.

"You know who else is there?" Marco asked, because Hannyabal and Magellan weren't the only two coming down. "I think one of them is a marine, a vice-admiral I believe. We have met before. But the other two, I have no idea." Nor did he know the animal presence with them, but that wasn't the priority here.

Ace closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.

"The weaker one is a warden. Domino, I think her name is. I haven't felt the last presence before."

Which meant there was a powerful unknown person coming down. The vice-admiral was strong, and so was the guard woman, though not nearly as much as the marine. The unidentified presence, however, was more powerful than them, easily on Magellan's level of dangerous. Probably stronger.

Marco moved to a more comfortable position, as much as the chains allowed, and he saw Ace settle down against the other wall on a seemingly relaxed and most certainly forced manner.

They didn't need to guess too much to know the visit was for them. Today, of all days, the chances of a higher level marine and someone that powerful to come down to level six for any other prisoner were too slim to even be translated into a percentage.

The elevator's doors opened with their ominous sound and the party approached. When they stopped before the cell, Magellan, the female guard and the vice-admiral —Momonga, Marco remembered belatedly— stayed behind, while Hannyabal moved closer to the bars, the unknown person and the animal hidden by his bigger frame.

"We have a special visitor for you!" Hannyabal announced in that superior voice of his that grated on the nerves. "You have never seen her face, Ace, and I doubt even _you_ have met her before, Marco." Marco didn't usually mind people using his name, but he felt the urge to punch the Hannyabal about right now just by the way he had pronounced it, as if he was somehow superior to Marco.

Marco ignored the man's words, because he had a thing for pompous speeches that were frankly boring, and instead fixed his eyes on the spot he was covering with his body. When Hannyabal finally moved aside and Marco could see the ones behind him —was that a snake?— he had to admit that it was true he had never met the woman in person before, but he knew just who she was.

The Pirate Empress, Boa Hancock.

Marco wondered what she was doing here. She had no business with either of them, Ace's face told him he didn't know her more than by name either, and yet here she was.

Hannyabal's overblown introduction had drawn the attention of every single inhabitant of level six, and now their annoying neighbors were yelling all sorts of obscenities at the Shichibukai. Marco had to admit, however, that Hancock lived up to her reputation. Still, the background noise was annoying from the moment it started.

"What do you want with us?" Ace asked, ignoring the noise with the expertise of someone who had been exposed to it for years.

"I have no business with either of you," she said, and wasn't that a strange response? "I just wanted to see you for myself, the men who will be the trigger for the battle in which I am set to participate."

_Huh._

"Some show we are," Ace muttered.

Marco, however, didn't believe her words. She was wearing kairoseki handcuffs and was surrounded by some very powerful men in the depths of the most secure prison in the world, a place not even someone as strong as her would have been able to escape in her current condition. No one, even less someone with a reputation to despise the government the way she did, would agree to submit herself to such conditions simply to see the reason for which there was going to be a war.

Marco almost called bullshit on her words, but decided to hold back and wait to see if she would do or say anything else.

Meanwhile, the prisoners had become the most annoying they had been ever since the day Marco had come in and they had been mocking him, and Magellan was starting to lose his temper. Marco hadn't been here long, but he was fairly sure that Magellan losing it wasn't a good thing to happen.

"Degenerates!" Hancock then exclaimed, cutting through all the yelling around the level. "If you persist in shouting at me in such uncouth voices… I shall be…" she did a short pause, raising a hand up to her face and blushing in what to Marco seemed to be a perfectly rehearsed way, "afraid…!"

_That_ intensified considerably the ruckus going around. The prisoners became even more excited at Hancock's apparent reaction to their words and increased their efforts to make themselves be heard over the rest, which in turn made Magellan —who was drooling over Hancock just as must as the prisoners— finally lose his temper.

Marco watched in interest as the Chief Warden unleashed what was helpfully identified by the other inmates as 'the freaking hydra', a name that defined very well the giant monster made of poison that grew from Magellan's body and was launched at the prisoners. Whoever was hit by it, it seemed, would unavoidably die. Marco wondered if he could call dibs on fighting Magellan. That technique alone promised it would be interesting.

Once he was done with his little show of power, Magellan turned to Hancock.

"Now, Hancock-dono, continue, please."

"No, I have just finished my business here."

Marco raised an eyebrow, because, really? But then, before he could finally call attention to how absurd this whole visit had been, he heard Ace speak.

"Hey…!" he called after her, and there was something desperate in his voice that made Marco pause. "Are you… serious?!" '_Serious'?_ What had Marco missed?

She turned to look at him, and there was something in her eyes that for a moment Marco mistook for pity. But that wasn't what it was. No, it looked more like sympathy, and he wondered what had just happened.

"I see no reason why I would lie," she spoke softly, and a small smile crossed her lips. "Incidentally, he was worried that you might be angry with him."

Marco stared at Ace's shell shocked face, but waited until the elevator's doors closed behind their visitors before he spoke.

"What did she say?"

Ace, the same person who had been awaiting his own execution with utter indifference, brought his knees up to his chest, draped his arms around them and barely held his head high enough that it couldn't be said he had buried it between them.

"Luffy…" he breathed out, and the word alone seemed to pain him. "She said he's _here_. She said he came here to _save me_."

And then Ace did bury his head in his knees.

_Oh, fuck_. Marco thought, and for a moment there that was the only word that crossed his mind because it was ridiculous, completely stupid, and yet it made absolute sense that the guy who had assaulted one of the government's strongholds to save one of his crewmembers would do the same again for his brother.

"Here?" he repeated, just to be sure.

Ace nodded morosely.

"I should've thought of it," Ace, who now sounded very much like a lost boy, said, his voice quivering. "Luffy's an idiot, he never thinks, and I didn't even stop to think how he would react to that damn article. I didn't want to think about it, I've been doing my best _not_ to think about Luffy for years because I'm a fucking coward, but I should've realized he would do something stupid and prevented it."

"How?" Marco asked, because now Ace was rambling, voice fast and desperate, and making less and less sense with every word he said.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Ace yelled, his head jerking upright to glare at Marco, and it was a good thing the other prisoners were too distracted commenting on Hancock to pay them any mind. "ANYTHING! I could've asked Gramps to track him down and beat the shit out of him so he wouldn't show up or something like that!"

"Are you listening to yourself?!" Marco demanded, unable to react in any other way at how _sure_ Ace sounded that he should have done what he had just said. "You would set fucking _Garp_ on your brother?! He may be his grandfather, but that wouldn't stop him from practically killing him!" And Marco knew, because he had seen him fight. He had fought him some times, and he had seen the men he 'trained' whenever there was a fight soon after one of those training sessions. The Whitebeard Pirates had even agreed at one point that, if those men didn't do anything to enter the fight, they were to be left alone. No one liked to beat a half dead enemy.

"AT LEAST HE WOULD BE_ ALIVE_!" Ace yelled back. "But what now?! He's going to be caught, and if they don't kill him then they'll put him in the fucking level five until he dies! How's that any better?!"

Marco closed his eyes. This was the _worst_ thing that could have happened. Everything had been going so well… Not that he didn't admire the kid, because, really, one needed a special kind of balls to launch a solo assault on Impel Down with the objective of freeing one of the top level prisoners, but it was still too fucking inconvenient.

"Your brother is a lucky guy, isn't he?"

"Nobody's _that_ lucky," Ace growled through clenched teeth.

Marco ignored that. This was going to be hard, even worse than any way he had pictured the conversation would go. It was worse than worst case scenario. But, well, Marco had been into near death situations for less than this.

"Lucky enough to survive until tomorrow?"

That caught Ace off guard.

"What?" Then he frowned, his glare intensifying once more. "You're not saying he should slip into a marine ship. There's no fucking way he'd be able to do that."

"No, I know. But tomorrow, at this hour, this prison will be swarming with Whitebeard Pirates."

Marco took the moment Ace was left stunned to take a deep breath, hoping he would be able to finish before Ace decided to do anything like punch him. Ace leaned forward, brow so furrowed that his eyebrows almost touched and gaze so intent it would be terrifying to most.

"What are you talking about? _How _can you know that?" Because, reasonably, there was no way Marco, imprisoned here as he was, could know for sure where the attack to rescue him would happen, and everybody would assume the most likely place would be at Marineford, with the entire world as witness.

"Well, I may not have been defeated as the marines thought, a week ago," he answered, and watched intently for a reaction.

It didn't take Ace long to understand what he meant, and his eyebrows did a strange little dance. He bit his cheek and clenched and unclenched a white-knuckled fist.

"Explain," he demanded.

"It's kind of a long story," Marco warned, because he didn't want Ace to accuse him of not getting to the point.

"_Explain_," Ace insisted.

Marco moved to lean his back against the wall and looked at the wall above the Ace's head. He had hoped, futilely he knew, he wouldn't have to be the one to tell this story. Not because he didn't want Ace to know everything, but because he _hated_ remembering it.

"You've heard a lot about us, so I guess you know that we don't let anyone get away with killing someone from our crew, much less if the person who does it is another crewmember." A curt nod. "Well, a few months ago, after a fight with another crew, Thatch — the Fourth Division Commander— found a devil fruit. He didn't know which power it had, and wasn't sure if he wanted to eat it. In our crew, the fruit belongs to whoever finds it, and if they don't want to eat it then it's up to them to decide what to do with it. Thatch wanted to think about it, but later that night we found him dead, and the fruit gone." An image of Thatch, bleeding on the floor and his eyes unseeing, crossed Marco's mind. He shook his head, refusing to linger on it, and continued. Thankfully, Ace didn't say anything. "We figured who had done it, because he was the only one missing when we checked. A member of the second division, his name is Marshall D. Teach. Normally, the division's commander would have gone after him, but the second division has no commander right now —we had offered _him_ the position and he had refused— so I was going to go after him myself. But Pops stopped me. He said there was something wrong about all this, and that he had a bad feeling."

"And you didn't go?" Ace interrupted, incredulous. It was obvious by his tone that he would have gone all the same.

"One doesn't survive in the New World for so long, much less with a title like The Strongest Man in the World, without listening to his instincts. We weren't going to just let it go, but decided to figure out why Teach, who had been a part of the crew for over twenty years, had decided to act now."

"And did you?"

"Yes." Marco closed his eyes. It was so stupid a reason that Thatch had had to die for _that_. "He wanted the fruit. There was a book in his cabin, a guide about devil fruits, and this one —many of us identified the picture of it— was marked." Thatch had been one of the nicest guys in the crew, if Teach had simply asked for it, explained he really wanted it that much instead of attacking him, Marco was sure Thatch would have had no problem in giving it to him.

"Okay, that sucks. But what has that to do with you being here?" Ace asked, surprisingly not as impatiently as Marco had expected. Perhaps because he could sympathize with the feeling of losing a brother.

"I'm getting there. That fruit's power is a very special one, it is said to disable any devil fruit power it touches. That would leave many people helpless against Teach. He's a strong guy, and that way he could probably have taken down some of the commanders if they had gone alone. I'm not so sure about myself, but I'm a weird case when it comes to fighting with my powers. Anyway," he was getting off track, there had been a long conversation on the Moby Dick about the implications of Teach's new power, "by the time we had buried Thatch and had gathered all the information we could, the word had spread that we had let Teach escape, and many pirate crews began to attack our territories, thinking we had grown weak. Kaido has been especially annoying in that matter. We had to fight them off, and by the time the attacks decreased, any lead on Teach had vanished." They were going to get him, no doubt there, it was clear Teach had a plan, and would have to resurface at some point to enact it. "Still, the situation is a problem, and we thought we had to make it clear we will take on anybody who dares to challenge us. Then the news about your execution came out."

Ace's eyes widened considerably at this, and Marco waited for him to make all the connections.

"What… _the fuck_?" He stood up and walked to the bars, turned around and headed for the back wall of the cell. "You're not fucking telling me what I think you're _fucking telling me_."

"If you think I let myself be caught on purpose to have a reason for the crew to assault Impel Down, then yes, that is exactly what I'm saying."

"_WHAT. THE. FUCK_?!" Ace yelled again. "That's the most stupid shit I've ever heard. Why would you do that?!"

"Various reasons, actually." Marco's calm when he responded threw Ace off, and he took the chance to continue speaking. "First of all, we are getting across the message that _no one_ messes with our crew. Not even Teach. If he's got a working brain cell in that head of his, he'll know we'll go after him. Second, we are showing we won't do as everyone expects us to, by attacking here instead of Marineford, and while we are at it we will prove wrong this place's fame of being impregnable." Maybe they were a little late on that one, Marco thought, but a full scale attack still would be impressive, previous insane intruder or not. "_And_ we are busting your ass out of here because it's not right they want to kill you simply because you _exist_."

Ace didn't say a word for so long that Marco thought he wasn't going to speak again, but when he did speak it wasn't anything Marco had been expecting to hear.

"Is that why you've been talking to me?"

"What?"

"These days. All that crap about escaping and everything, you were trying to convince me to go along with this."

"In part, yes. I wasn't expecting to be in the same cell as you, to be honest." That had been a surprise, but not one Marco was complaining about. He liked Ace, and making him stop thinking it was _fine_ that he was going to be executed had been better than anything Marco had expected would happen this week.

He didn't move an inch when the wall next to his head cracked at the force of Ace's kick. Looking up, he met his murderous eyes head on. Ace was close, standing as close as Marco's crossed and chained legs would allow, glaring down at him.

"So you've been lying?" It was barely audible, even at that distance. Ace's hands were clenched so tight that blood was dripping down them, no doubt from where his nails pierced the skin. His entire frame was shaking in barely contained rage.

"No. Everything I have told you is true."

"Yeah, sure," Ace spat. "Were you getting your kicks out of it or simply bored?"

Not waiting for an answer, Ace turned around and walked to the other end of the cell.

"Neither," Marco said, but the only response he received was Ace kicking the opposite wall with as much strength as he had used on the one Marco was chained to.

He hadn't noticed the silence around them until it was broken by amused pirates.

"TROUBLE IN PARADISE?!" Someone yelled to general laughter.

Before Marco could say anything to shut them up, Ace did.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU ASSHOLES!" A burst of what was undoubtedly haoshoku haki accompanied his words, and various bodies dropping down could be heard. Ace sat down, facing the wall and his taut back turned to Marco.

"Fucking brat! We told you to stop doing that!" someone yelled, but was ignored.

"Ace," Marco called him, to no avail. Ace didn't move, nor did he speak again.


	3. Chapter 3

At the bottom of this part you'll find the link to the second piece of art :) You'll know which scene it is ;)

* * *

**Part III**

Luffy grinned like a madman as he ran, kicking the annoying monkey guards out of the way. Things had gone from almost bad to great, and now, though Buggy and Three had left, he had a new companion. Bon-chan, whom he had believed had died back in Alabasta, was alive and helping him.

Seeing him here had been great, and they had beaten the damn giant lion together in no time. Besides, Bon-chan said he wanted to meet someone down on level five, and was going to take Luffy there. As they moved, Luffy told him about Ace. Bon-chan was crying, sure, but that didn't stop him from spinning around and kicking enemies away. He was a much more useful partner than Buggy in that.

Luffy was advancing fast once more.

There was a small problem when some weird cow —Bon-chan said it was a 'Demon Guard', whatever that meant— attacked them, but Luffy punched it out of the way. He didn't have time to fight it properly, and so getting rid of it as fast as possible was the best option.

Now Luffy wasn't grinning anymore.

He was standing with Bon-chan on a burning hot wall, staring at the column of boiling smoke that rose from level four. They had to go through there if they wanted to reach level five. The heat rising from it made level three seem cold —and Luffy had been annoyed at the heat in level three a moment ago— and Bon-chan said that if they landed on the wrong place they would die. There was fire and a pool of boiling blood down there.

That didn't mean Luffy wouldn't go. Ace was beyond that place.

* * *

However long it had been since their discussion, Marco decided, it was more than enough time for Ace to brood. He was growing increasingly more depressed by the second, no doubt thinking about his little brother and everything that could be happening to him while they were here.

"Ace." Unsurprisingly, he was ignored. Marco didn't care. "I know you're listening, even if you don't answer. That's fine, I just need you to listen. This situation is horrible, there is no point denying that, but think about _how_ you've learned about it. Boa Hancock, a pirate who is renowned for despising men, came all the way here, putting herself in a very vulnerable position, just to tell you Luffy is here."

Ace's shoulders twitched, and he turned his head sideways to glance at Marco out of the corner of his eye.

"So?" Well, that was a reaction at least.

"How did she know he is here, in the first place?"

Ace shrugged, and Marco decided to let it pass because it wasn't like he was in any condition to think logically or in depth about anything right now.

"Alright, let's look at it another way. How did your brother manage to get in here? I don't need to be able to look outside to know there must be a small army of marine battleships surrounding the prison about right now. It's supposedly impenetrable on a normal day. Today? There is no way he would have been able to fight his way in —and it's even less likely that's how he got in because Magellan obviously didn't know he is here, or he wouldn't have come down."

"You think she helped him in?" Ace asked dubiously. It was obvious he was reluctant to take part in the conversation, but at the same time he was too curious to stay silent.

"It's what makes the most sense," Marco, who had been replaying the strange meeting in his mind, answered.

Ace scoffed.

"Oh, come on. Even_ I _have heard about the isle of women. They kill any man that gets in there, why would the empress, who as you've said hates men so much, help Luffy?"

"No idea. But she smiled when she said your brother is worried you will be angry with him, didn't she?"

This was all just a theory, of course, Marco couldn't really think of any reason why _Boa Hancock_ would not only spare a man's life, but basically risk everything to help him do something that by all means was impossible. Yet, it was the only explanation for what was happening that he had been able to come up with, and it had managed to draw Ace out of his shell.

Ace, however, turned back to the wall again.

"Whatever. How Luffy got here doesn't change the fact that he _is_ here, and that's the problem."

"True, but it's worth a thought. Your brother has to be a damn special man to have gotten Hancock's help, and that alone says a lot about him. He's lucky, and pretty strong for a rookie."

"Not enough to pull this off," Ace muttered. It might have been a growl if his voice hadn't sounded so defeated.

"No, but maybe it's enough for him to survive until tomorrow."

Ace hunched up into himself, burying his face in his hands.

"If they catch him, they'll torture him. And if _Magellan_ catches him, he's dead."

"I know that, Ace. I'm not trying to convince you that everything will be fine, I'm just trying to say that it's not certain he will die, either."

"Yeah, okay, so assume he lands his ass in level five. What then?" This time Ace did growl, and Marco was oddly glad to hear that response.

"Then, when my crew shows up, we'll look for him."

That made Ace turn around to stare at him with wide eyes.

"What?"

Marco did his best attempt at a shrug in the awkward position his shoulders were in. He had a very serious cramp by now.

"He's your brother. Besides, I haven't met the guy and I already like him." What he wasn't going to say was that some of the things he had heard about Luffy reminded him of Roger. He was sure Ace wouldn't react well to that observation.

Ace stared at him, his hard eyes scrutinizing Marco's face. He finally sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"You're serious. Man, you're crazy."

Marco smiled.

"It's a requisite in my crew." Before the silence could stretch and Ace could sink back into his worried state, he decided to ask something. "Tell me more about Luffy."

"Huh?" This time Ace's eyes weren't as hard as before, and he looked mostly caught off guard.

"If you are going to think about him, at least think about something other than what may be happening now. What's he like? You never got into much detail about that."

A soft, yet sad, smile stretched Ace's lips.

"Well, he's crazy. I couldn't stand him at first," Ace paused before he went into any more detail, tilting his head to one side. "If I am going to tell you about it, I guess I should talk about Sabo first."

"Sabo?"

"My other brother."

* * *

Luffy couldn't move, not anymore.

He had tried to beat the poison guy, put everything he had in each of his attacks to take him down. His hands, his sight, his hearing… None of that mattered if that meant he could get past the man. If he could get to Ace, then it all was worth it.

But it hadn't been enough.

Luffy couldn't move, his body covered in poison, and he had barely scratched the man.

Magellan might have said something, or he might not have. It didn't matter. Everything Luffy could focus on was Ace. The grinning Ace he could see clearly in his mind, laughing at Luffy because he had lost one of their matches yet again. Telling him he wasn't strong enough.

Ace was right. Luffy was still too weak.

* * *

Level six had started to grow quieter and quieter for what must have been the last couple of hours, signaling the arrival of the night. Ace, however, was in no state to even try to fall asleep. He had been talking for hours, and had drunk more water than he usually did in two days —not that it mattered, there was some left and they wouldn't be here tomorrow one way or another, so both Marco and Ace were drinking with less care than they had done the previous days.

At first it had been hard, trying to concentrate on happier memories, most of which he hadn't allowed himself to dwell into for years, and forget about what might be happening on the upper levels of the prison, but Marco had proven surprisingly good at directing the conversation in a way that would distract him. It was probably experience with such a big family.

When he approached the story of what had happened to Sabo, Ace's mood had soured again, and his mind threatened to go back to another train of thoughts, but Marco had noticed and asked something else: Ace had mentioned about the straw hat before, and he had asked about it, which had led them on a tangent about Red Haired Shanks, whom apparently Marco knew in person and was somewhat of an annoying idiot, but a good enough guy for a pirate, and who knew how to party.

Now Ace had run out of ideas to talk about, and the silence surrounding them felt both heavy and oppressive.

It was cold, too, which was strange all in itself. It had been years since Ace had felt cold, as the temperature in here rarely changed, and he had long since grown accustomed to it. At first, the thin prison clothes hadn't been enough, much less when he had been used to a mostly warm climate and to having clothes adapted to each season, but now he rarely paid any attention to the temperature.

A shiver ran up his spine.

"Are you cold?" Marco, who of course had been observing him —he had scarcely moved his eyes away from Ace all day— asked.

"Just a little."

"Come here, then."

Ace's eyebrows climbed up to his hairline.

"What?"

"Sharing body heat helps with the cold. And it's not like we can ask for a blanket."

"You want to _cuddle_? I don't cuddle," Ace said, which was technically true. The last time it could be said he had done something similar to that had been when he was thirteen, because Luffy was clingy and they had slept on the same bed. Luffy would probably need it now, because if they had caught him they would have sent him to level five, and that place was _cold_.

_Oh, no, no, no, don't think about it. He's got to be fine, that kid's lucky as hell. Don't think about it._

"I can hardly cuddle chained to a wall," Marco responded, cutting off Ace's train of thoughts before it could go on any further. "Just get over here."

Ace should have been more reluctant to comply, he wasn't all that used to physical contact and all that. The guards' manhandling during the bathroom trips aside, the only person with whom sometimes he had had any contact had been Gramps, and that was usually limited to a clasp on the shoulder through the cell bars. And yet, some part of him really wanted to move closer. Marco was muscular, nothing like Ace's bony body, and no doubt he would be nice to lie against. Ace didn't remember what a pillow or a mattress felt like, and had long since grown accustomed to sleeping on the floor, but that didn't prevent him from knowing it wasn't a really comfortable place to lie on.

Standing up, he walked closer to Marco and dropped on the ground next to him. Marco's eyes followed his every movement, and that was another reason Ace didn't hesitate about his actions. He had never grown out of the mindset that didn't allow him to back off from a fight, and, though technically not a fight, refusing to do this felt very much like backing out from a challenge.

He let himself fall sideways, and his body came into contact with Marco's. Damn, but he was _warm_. And felt strange. The feeling of lying against another body was something like nothing he could really remember. He knew he had done it in the past when he slept in the same bed as his brothers, of course, but he didn't think this had anything in common with that. Marco's muscles were hard, and yet they were somehow soft and comfortable at the same time. Nothing like the times he had taken off his shirt and bundled it up to serve as a pillow.

Before he could think about it, he had turned sideways, settled down into a different position that felt still more comfortable and wrapped an arm around Marco's waist.

"Better?" Marco asked softly. This way, Ace realized, they could speak in lower voices, too, and avoid being overheard in the now quieter prison.

"You're warm."

"Good."

"I can't sleep," Ace told him. And, even if he could manage it, he wouldn't want to. He refused to even think of what sort of nightmares might assault him if he tried.

"Me neither," Marco admitted. Ace felt him move, the chains rattling, and then there was a warm cheek resting on the top of his head. It felt good.

"Tell me about your crew. Are they as annoying as you?" Ace asked, wanting something else to distract him. Hearing about a decent pirate crew was about the best thing he could think of right now.

"Worse," Marco answered with an almost silent chuckle.

He did tell Ace many things about the Whitebeard Pirates, and listening to him was a good way to avoid thinking of anything but the words Marco was speaking.

* * *

Being stationed at Impel Down was boring.

That was a thought many of the marines deployed here shared. It was a necessity of sorts, their presence at the prison, they understood it, of course, and no one would dare voice a thought opposing it. That didn't make it any less boring, though. Everybody knew Whitebeard would attack Marineford, and that their presence at Impel Down was more for show than anything else. That was good, really, as far as most of the people present —overly zealous marines aside— were concerned. Nobody really wanted to take part in _that_ battle, where so many were bound to die. With some luck, if they were ordered to go to Headquarters after the attack started, they would arrive too late to help in the fight.

Those were the thoughts of Petty Officer Stan as he looked at the now closed prison of Impel Down.

There had been an incident yesterday, when that crazy ass rookie Strawhat Luffy had infiltrated Impel Down and started a riot on level two, but the marines had been prevented from participating by the also crazy guard dressed in pink leather —who had creeped the hell out of Stan, even though she had been hot— but now it was all solved: Strawhat had been caught, and the riot was under control.

Now, the only thing they were waiting for was dawn to arrive, and with it the convoy that would transfer the prisoners to Marineford.

Two more hours left and this assignment would be as good as over.

An explosion rocked the entire bay and Stan stared in astonished horror at the flaming remnants of the two marine ships that had blown up simultaneously. One of them was right at the left of the ship he was on.

Chaos broke out, everyone pulling their weapons out and looking around, many going for the cannons and some looking for the origin of the explosions.

Then, the four words Petty Officer Stan had never wanted to hear in his entire life were yelled from somewhere closer to the stern.

"IT'S THE MOBY DICK!"

His legs trembling like jelly, Stan made use of all his admittedly limited willpower to turn jerkily around. Sure enough, in the bay that had been clear moments ago now floated one of the most infamous ships in the entire world, flanked by three smaller vessels that had a very similar design to it.

The decks of the four ships were packed with people. On the figurehead of the Moby Dick stood the tall, easily recognizable figure of the Yonko Whitebeard.

Stan needed a change of pants.

* * *

Namur grinned, all his sharp teeth showing, at the mayhem he could hear from above the surface. In the middle of the chaos, four of their ships had surfaced and now only the paddle boat was left, still coated, at the bottom of the sea just in case they needed it.

The Eighth Division Commander moved on to the next ship now. He had taken care of the two that were closer to the closed off entrance of the prison already. That —the prison being closed— was an unexpected development, and it would alter their plan a bit. Either way, that was the rest of the crew's problem: his job was taking care of as many ships as he could. It wasn't as easy as destroying an average ship would be, because the vessels sent to Impel Down had the hull covered in kairoseki, and Namur had to find a weak point to aim at for his attacks to have any effect.

He wondered how long it would take the marines to realize the attacks on their ships were coming from below.

* * *

Edward Newgate looked out at the prison before him as his children moved about, everybody eager to start the attack.

It was dark still, and they had managed to reach the place a couple of hours ahead of the convoy that had to come from Marine Headquarters to move both Marco and the Ace kid to Marineford. A quick scan with his haki proved there was no marine of significant power present here —no doubt they were all assembled at Marineford waiting for them— which was perfect as far as he was concerned.

However, even in the dark of the hours previous to dawn, he could see easily that the drawbridge of the prison was pulled closed. That was not something they had counted on, there was no reason why the guards should have deemed it necessary to close the entrance, and now they would have to sort the problem.

"What do we do, Pops?" Jozu, who was standing next to him, asked.

"Mmmhh… We could always just destroy it, but that could prove to be a problem."

He looked around, trying to calculate the distance to the entrance from here. The marine ships closest to it had been destroyed, and the remaining wreckage would prevent any of the others from moving closer easily. Just then, another ship went up in a loud explosion. Looking around at the commanders assembled around him, he made a decision.

"Vista," he called, and his son looked up at him, "if I throw you there, could you cut whatever's holding it," he couldn't tell if it was ropes or chains, "and make it fall?"

"Do you really need to ask?" he sounded half indignant and half amused, and Whitebeard laughed.

"Sorry." Another look around, and he found his two strongest children when it came to long-range fights. "Curiel, Izo, you'll cover him."

Once the plan was made, it was a matter of making the appropriate calculations to make sure he didn't miss. At least, if he _did_ miss, he wasn't sending any Devil Fruit user on this attack.

"You know," he heard coming from behind, "Marco could've solved this in a sec."

Yes, that was true, Marco's presence would have sped the attack up considerably, but it had been unanimously decided that he was the best man to do what had needed to be done, too. You could never have everything in this world.

And, speaking of his son, he _better_ be alright, or not a single stone of this place would be left standing by the time Whitebeard was done with it.

* * *

Magellan had used too much poison in his fight with Strawhat Luffy the day before, and now he was paying the price for it. His trip to the bathroom was proving to be a much harder fight than usual, and he didn't appreciate it when he was interrupted.

"Chief Warden!" Domino's voice cut through the grunts of his struggle. That was odd, Magellan was sure he still had a couple of hours left before the convoy would arrive. At least, if the person disturbing him was Domino, it meant there must be a legitimate reason for it. She was a no nonsense woman, nothing like his annoying vice warden. "This is terrible! The Whitebeard Pirates are here!"

"WHAT?!" he yelled, standing up. He immediately fell back down. Ouch, he shouldn't have done that.

"They just blew up three of the marine battleships stationed outside!"

Magellan gritted his teeth. What the hell were those pirates doing here? They were supposed to attack Marineford, even Fleet Admiral Sengoku had been convinced that it was the most likely course of action Whitebeard would take. All their other security measures were for precaution more than anything else.

"Get Hannyabal, Sadi-chan and Saldeath on the den den mushi, and warn Marine Headquarters!" he ordered.

Now he only had to get himself out of here by the time he would have to give orders to the other guards.

* * *

By all means, today should have been the happiest day of Bon Clay's life. Or, well, not _today_, as in a day in Impel Down that went to even more hell than usual, but the day he met Emporio Ivankov _should_ have been the happiest of his life. Iva-san was someone he had been willing to risk death for, whom he had always wanted to meet, and now he had. And yes, he was somewhat happy that it had finally come to pass, but he was too worried about Straw-chan —there was no way he would die, he _couldn't_, not after everything he had gone through to save his brother— to truly enjoy the experience.

He had, along with a huge group of inhabitants from level five point five and even Ivankov, been yelling encouragements at his screaming friend for hours now when someone came running up to them.

"IVA-SAMA!" the woman, at least she was a woman at the moment, yelled, making most of the others stop momentarily. "THE WHITEBEARD PIRATES HAVE ATTACKED IMPEL DOWN!" she announced.

Bon Clay didn't listen to much of what followed. Iva-san had said Straw-chan wouldn't recover —if he ever did— until long past the execution of his older brother. But now, with these news, it meant there might actually be a chance to save Portgas D. Ace even if Straw-chan couldn't do it himself.

With renewed resolve, Bon Clay started cheering again, making sure to tell him that he might be able to see his brother again. Straw-chan was unbelievably strong, and any hope, he knew, would do a lot to make him fight even harder.

* * *

Sengoku was pacing around in his office. Everything was ready, now they only had to wait for the prisoners to arrive and this parade would start. Looking out of his window, he could see the mighty force that was all these strong marines assembled in a single location. They had brought in everyone with a reputation who they had been able to get, sans the few officials like Vice Admiral Vergo from G-5 who they had left stationed in place to try to keep a measure of peace everywhere else. They couldn't let chaos explode around the world because they had all their power concentrated in one place, either.

However, Sengoku hadn't reached his position without learning some things. They might be more, but they had by no means victory guaranteed. Whitebeard was a force to be reckoned with, his commanders were a force to be reckoned with and his allies were a force to be reckoned with. Every single one of them would be here, Sengoku knew, and there was no way to tell how this war would end.

"Fleet Admiral Sengoku!" His door burst open and suddenly Brannew was there, and he looked shaken.

"What?" Sengoku asked. He didn't bother to point out the rudeness of the entrance, because that would never have happened if there wasn't an emergency.

An emergency at this point was a very bad development.

"The Whitebeard Pirates have assaulted Impel Down!"

"WHAT?!"

* * *

They had stopped talking a while ago now, and Ace was really trying not to think about Luffy.

"What time do you think it is?" Marco asked. Ace lifted his head from Marco's chest to look at him.

"Don't know exactly, a couple of hours until morning, perhaps. Why?"

Marco hummed, and then an almost pleasant grin spread through his face. Almost, because it had a decidedly creepy air to it.

"Then it's probably a matter of minutes, maybe an hour, until they attack. If they haven't already."

Ace sat up so suddenly he hit his head on the wall. He ignored the throbbing it caused.

"Really?!" he exclaimed. His mind went back to Luffy once more, and he prayed —Ace _never_ prayed— that his brother was alive somewhere in this place.

Marco nodded.

"What's up with you two so early?!" someone yelled at them.

It seemed Ace had accidentally woken up the neighbors. Not that he cared, he would give them the finger if they were able to see him.

* * *

Hannyabal wasn't having a good day. He had been at the guards' room in level five, coordinating the search for Strawhat Luffy, the damn okama who had tricked him and the other two prisoners who had just vanished from their radar. If the incident was something that would only affect Magellan, then Hannyabal would have been enjoying himself immensely; but no, his own position would be at risk as well if they didn't find those prisoners, and that just wouldn't do.

Now, to make things even worse, _the fucking Whitebeard Pirates were attacking Impel Down_. Not only was that _not_ supposed to happen, but it was something Hannyabal really _didn't_ want to happen. He didn't want to go up against one of those monster commanders, thank you very much.

They were in such a hurry to coordinate the prison's defenses that they didn't even wait to converge in level four as usual to talk, instead using the den den mushi for it.

"Forget about the search," were Magellan's first words, which, really, was a very obvious order. "Our priority is to gain time until reinforcements from Marine Headquarters arrive. Saldeath, I want you to spread the Blugori across the entrance level and level one. Organize them in a way that will draw the fights out as long as possible."

"Understood," came Saldeath's answer.

"Hannyabal, send orders to level two to send the strongest beasts down to level three. It is unlikely they will enter level two as the stairs from level one go down to level three, but leave some beasts there just in case. Tell them to organize the rest on level three blocking the path to the stairs down to level four." There was a pause here, and Hannyabal reluctantly added: "And deploy some around the pit, too, just in case there is some other pirate as insane as Strawhat."

Hannyabal grunted his assent.

"And where do I go?" He was sure he wouldn't like the answer, whatever it was.

"I want you blocking the door to level four as well. Don't be tricked this time."

Hannyabal growled, and he was sure he heard a snicker from somewhere in the guards' room.

"As for you, Sadi-chan, assemble the Demon Guards and join me on level four. Here is where we have the most chances of holding an attack back the longest."

There was a moaned reply from the other end of the line. Sadi-chan, unsurprisingly, sounded excited at the prospect of having some fun. Hannyabal would never understand that woman.

"And what about the prisoner?" he asked, because someone had to. There was no need to specify what prisoner he was talking about.

Fucking Marco the Phoenix.

Magellan took a moment to answer.

"Leave him in his cell for now. That is the safest place to keep him. Leave a contingent of guards monitoring level six: if the worst happens and the enemy gets past level four, we will carry out the execution ourselves. But that is a last resort. It will be a shame on Impel Down if we can't manage to hold a prisoner until the time of his scheduled execution. Get moving and keep your den den mushi at hand."

And, with those words, all the orders were given.

* * *

Izo jumped down on the inner side of the bridge as soon as the door was open. No marines had managed to get near it, mostly due to the cannonballs aimed at their ships and both his and Curiel's shots at anyone who managed to get past those.

Also, no guards had come out of the prison to attack. He wasn't sure if he should be surprised by that fact or not: coming outside was a sure death for them, and probably wouldn't serve much of a purpose. Impel Down, as far as the rumors said, was a giant labyrinth full of traps; staying inside was probably the guards' best bet to resist.

Vista and Curiel landed next to him, and the three commanders waited, ready to fend off any attack that might come, for the rest of the group that would charge into the prison with them. It wasn't a large group, at least not in comparison to the numbers that composed the crew, but they had decided a small number of carefully selected people would work better for an assault on the prison than if the whole crew charged in.

In total, there would be eight commanders and fifty other crewmembers, everybody with their own objective.

An explosion at the other side of the wall surrounding the prison signaled another marine ship had been destroyed, and soon the ship carrying the people who would be joining them reached one of the now empty areas of the dock, people jumping down and heading for entrance of the prison.

That ship would stay there the whole time, ready to take them out of here at a moment's notice, and they had assigned enough people to protect it that no amount of enemy fire —maybe with the exception of an admiral or Garp— would be able to sink it.

* * *

The entrance level of Impel Down really lived up to the expectations. The dark stone walls, chains hanging from everywhere with no other apparent purpose but giving the place a dark and foreboding air and the giant barred doors —all of them made of kairoseki, of course— probably worked wonders to intimidate most of the prisoners when they were brought here.

Vista didn't care about any of the décor. What he did care about was the giant iron kettle full of boiling water he had seen not long after entering the building. He knew Marco wouldn't have shown any reaction to it, of course, but the fact that his brother had been put through that bath in the first place had been enough of a reason for him to cut the damned thing into small pieces. The boiling water inside had fallen on a group of guards that had been shooting at them from behind the kettle and, though Vista was by no means a sadist, their screams had been satisfying to the darker part of his mind.

He cut down another of the gorilla guards and stood up straight. These guys were far stronger than a human, still no match for him, but annoying all the same. A look around proved they were mostly taken care of by now, at least in this area of the level. Honoring its reputation, Impel Down was a real labyrinth, and that was slowing their advance considerably.

Off to one side, Haruta was interrogating one of the downed human guards, trying to get the location of the control room out of him. The man, however, wasn't cooperating, just as every person they had tried to get answers out of had refused to speak so far. Vista couldn't say he was surprised they refused to cooperate: looking around, he could guess anyone suspected of having betrayed the prison wouldn't fare much better than the prisoners did, but that didn't mean the he wasn't annoyed by the lack of information.

Reaching the control room was their first objective, and one of the things they really needed to do to advance. It was very likely they would obtain some information about the layout of the prison there, and they also suspected the control of the Gates of Justice was in the room as well. Gaining control over it would be a great advantage in this battle.

Besides, there was a certain rumor they needed to confirm.

Officially, Impel Down was divided in five levels for holding prisoners, but there was a story around that spoke of a sixth level where the most dangerous criminals were kept. They needed to see if it was true, because if that was the case then Marco would be held in level six instead of level five.

* * *

Being a guard in Impel Down was supposed to be easy. Well, not _easy_, exactly, as it took a lot of time and a special kind of stomach —or sadism, there were plenty of guards that could have been sadistic criminals very easily— to be able to witness the horrors that happened in this place on a daily basis. However, as far as safety to one's own life was concerned, being a guard was supposed to be much safer than being either a marine or a government soldier.

That supposition had been destroyed some forty minutes ago when the Whitebeard Pirates had decided that attacking Impel Down would be a better course of action than doing as they were supposed to do and attack Marine Headquarters.

And yet, as far as safety went, guard Kenichi was still much safer than some of his friends and acquaintances, who had been sent to the upper levels to be slaughtered in an attempt to gain time for the really strong guys to arrive. Kenichi was on level four, and he had been assigned the job of keeping in contact with the other levels and inform of any relevant events.

Level four was a sweltering furnace, and on a normal day he was as reluctant of stepping foot in here as he was of doing so on the freezing level five. Today, however, he was immensely glad of being here. The Chief Warden was here, too, and as long as Kenichi stayed away from his fighting range, he knew this was the safest place to be in the prison for a guard —sans, probably, the few guys who remained on levels five and six. Those were lucky bastards as far as Kenichi was concerned. Besides the chief, Sadi-chan and her Demon Guards were here too, which also added to the feeling of safety this level gave him. She might be a crazy woman Kenichi really didn't want to attract the attention of, but she was a strong crazy woman with strong monsters under her command.

One of the den den mushi started to sound and he hurried to grab the receiver.

"Level four," he answered mechanically.

"This is the Gates' control room, we've—!" The words on the other end were cut short by a gurgling sound, followed by a thud before the line went silent. Then the characteristic clicking sound of the receiver on the other end of the line being returned to its place was heard.

Kenichi's blood ran cold. He had just heard how someone died. He had just heard how someone was killed. Not a prisoner, not a criminal who had more than earned it. No. He had heard how a fellow guard had been murdered.

And, even worse yet, there was only one conclusion he could draw from what few words the man had been able to speak before his demise.

"SIR!" he yelled, pushing out of his seat and exiting the room he was in as fast as he could. "THE PIRATES HAVE TAKEN OVER THE CONTROL ROOM OF THE GATES OF JUSTICE!"

* * *

Sengoku looked somberly over the troops assembled on board of his ship. As soon as the news of the attack had reached him, he had ordered that everybody boarded the ships and headed for Impel Down.

Magellan had just called and informed him grimly that the prison had lost control over the Gates of Justice. It was a hard blow, but it was also an expected development. The control room was on the uppermost floor of the prison, there hadn't been much hope the pirates wouldn't have taken over it. He had hoped, however, that the pirates wouldn't manage to do it before the convoy that had been sent to collect the prisoners —and which had already departed from Marineford before the attack started— had crossed the Gates. Five vice admirals wouldn't have done too much against Whitebeard himself, but they would have been able to gain some more time.

Either way, Sengoku had planned their movements keeping in mind this would happen.

He had sent some ships through the Tarai Current just in case, mostly a couple of vice admirals and the less reliable of the Shichibukai —Doflamingo, because the man was a wild card at the best of times and it was unlikely he would make much of a difference in the fight, and Moria, who wasn't much of an asset anymore.

Everyone else was heading to Impel Down from outside of the current. The path was longer, two or three hours more than through the current at maximum speed, but they had more chances of actually being able to participate in the fight this way than being trapped behind the giant doors they couldn't cross without it being opened from inside the prison.

The result of the fight was just as uncertain as it had been before, only that now, instead of being a matter of strength and power, it had become a matter of seeing who would be faster: the marines in reaching Impel Down, or Whitebeard in conquering it.

Sengoku looked to the side. Garp was sitting on a crate of cannonballs, munching on a rice cookie. He wasn't laughing anymore —he _had_ done so when he had been told the news of the attack, and Sakazuki had almost tried to fry him for it— but Sengoku knew him well, and had no problem to read the shine that had settled in his eyes. Garp was conflicted. As a marine, he wanted to prevent Whitebeard from destroying one of the government's strongholds and put at risk their power, but there was also the part of him that was a grandfather, and that one was foolishly hoping Whitebeard would actually succeed on his attack and free his grandson while he was at it.

Both marines could agree, at least, that Edward Newgate would have no qualms about taking his old rival's son into his crew if given the chance. They only disagreed on what they thought about the possibility.

It was a strange world, indeed, if even the smallest part of Monkey D. Garp wished that one of his grandsons became a pirate.

* * *

Haruta took the only swivel chair and rolled it over to a position closer to the entrance of the control room, leaving the normal chairs for the other seven crewmembers present. It could be called unprofessional, sitting while one was supposed to keep guard at the entrance, but one of the few things pirates couldn't be accused of —and here the Whitebeard Pirates were no exception— was of being professional. Besides, with the ships and Pops outside the prison and Vista and Jozu's group taking the lower levels, it wasn't very likely anybody would be able to get into this level. And, if they could, well, Haruta's specialty was speed, and could react just as easily standing up as sitting down.

Izo, meanwhile, was browsing through the papers they had found in this place, looking for anything of use. The level of organization in this place meant they had confirmed in no time the existence of level six, and that both Marco and the Ace boy were held there. In the same cell, according to the papers that had been ready at the top of the documents, presumably so that the guards and marines could sign them once the prisoners were handed over to the convoy.

There had been something off about the level, though. The names of all other five levels —Crimson Hell, Wild Beast Hell, Starvation Hell, Blazing Hell and Freezing Hell— gave a good idea of what type of torture the prisoners were subjected to in there, but level six's other name, Eternal Hell, didn't. Having in account the types of scenes the other names brought to mind, Haruta fervently hoped the name meant they simply kept the prisoners in their cells, considering them too dangerous to even take them out of there for torture.

Looking at the monitors proved useless in that regard, because the screens only showed images from the level they were on. They served, however, to speed up the other group's advance. Izo was currently talking on the den den mushi to Vista, giving him instructions to reach the stairs down to level one.

They had to be careful about what they talked about on the den den mushi, though; just as some of their men here were trying to catch snippets of their enemies' conversations through them, there was no doubt the guards would try to do the same.

* * *

Buggy and Mr. 3 had somehow managed to escape the wolves in level five after separating from Mr. 2, who still had been intent on saving Strawhat despite the boy's fight against Magellan and subsequent sure death. They had found, by pure chance, a hidden path behind the walls, and had followed it until they found themselves back up in level two.

They had remained unseen ever since, waiting for a chance to finally escape. Their original plan had been to wait until after the prisoners were handed over to the marines and the security outside loosened, because they knew then they would have more chances of escaping.

But now something was happening in the prison again, something no one had expected.

Buggy had grinned when a voice came from the speakers, filling the air with orders for all guards to prepare for battle. The Blugori, which had remained in level two ever since the riot had been taken care of, had left back for level one, and many of the monsters usually stationed in level two had now been moved down to level three.

As a result, very little security remained on this level, and it was the perfect chance just begging to be taken advantage of.

Using Mr. 3's very useful powers, they had made copies of the keys to almost every one of the cells, and now had behind their backs a very grateful, very promising group of pirates.

"Are you sure this will work?" Mr. 3, who had been somewhat skeptical of Buggy's plan from the beginning, asked him once again in a whisper, so he wouldn't be overheard.

"Of course I am," Buggy muttered. This was one of his genius plans, and he didn't like to have doubt cast upon his genius plans. He turned to his new minions —the guys practically adored him at this point, and they would once his brilliance had got them out of here— and exclaimed: "REMEMBER, YOU ALL! DON'T TOUCH THE WHITEBEARD PIRATES AND WE'LL BE OUT OF HERE IN NO TIME!"

Enthusiastic yelling followed.

It was a good thing, Buggy reflected, that Whitebeard was such a sucker for helping people that hadn't crossed him. The only thing he had had to do was ask the prisoners about their opinion on Whitebeard, and make sure he didn't free anyone who hated him too much to be able to hold back from doing anything stupid.

Buggy really didn't want to die just because some idiot decided to piss Whitebeard off in the worst possible way.

* * *

Whitebeard watched from his place on the figurehead of the Moby Dick as his children had some fun.

Once the infiltration team was inside the prison, they had decided to stop blowing up marine ships: there had been few of them in the first place, and it wasn't fair that so many people would be left without a fight if the marines didn't show up. Thus, with six ships still standing, Namur had come back on board and they had attacked.

It wasn't a fair fight on the marines, but no one cared about that.

The den den mushi in his pocket started to sound.

"Yeah?" he answered. Some marines were launched quite a distance away from a ship before they fell into the water.

"Pops?" It was Jozu. There was some background noise, as if many people were talking behind him. "I'm on level two. We may have a change of plans."

"What do you mean?" His son didn't sound worried, so Whitebeard assumed it wasn't anything bad.

"As we're attacking the prison, the prisoners of this level are asking if we could bust them out while we're at it," Jozu said, sounding obviously amused.

Whitebeard chuckled.

"Anyone we don't want out?"

"No, they sorted it out themselves, it seems."

"Well, then why not? Get the ones from level one out on your way out, there are some marine ships here that'll do nicely for them," Whitebeard paused for a moment, and then decided to add, "be more careful with the lower levels, though. And tell Vista."

"There's something else. Do you remember that rookie that attacked Enies Lobby, Strawhat Luffy?"

* * *

It wasn't really a thought the first thing that crossed Luffy's mind when he became fully aware of his surroundings again. He was hungry, his stomach almost as loud as his voice had been, and so the first thing he did, before his brain could fully begin to work, was demand food.

It was all a blur afterwards. There were some comments —or yells, whatever— that he shouldn't have been awake so soon. Luffy didn't care. His attention was all on eating all the food they were bringing him as fast as possible. He needed energy, lots of it, to go save Ace.

When he was done eating —man, that had felt good, he had been hungry ever since before fighting Magellan— he left the room he had been in.

Bon-chan was alive and mostly fine —tired, it seemed— thanks to Iva-chan, the guy who had saved him too. And Bon-chan, Iva-chan said, had been cheering on him all the while Luffy had been in that box.

* * *

Ivankov hadn't had any plans to escape Impel Down. Not any time soon anyway. As he had told Mr. 2 last night, the time was not right: he was waiting for Dragon to make his move before doing anything from here. But then the Strawhat-boy —and at this rate he would give him a heart attack— had said Dragon was _his father_. Which, once said, made a lot of sense, of course, because he could really _see_ _it_. Strawhat's will to live was so strong it did remind Ivankov of Dragon's own willpower.

And, as Dragon's son, the least Iva could do was ensure that he didn't die this time running around Impel Down.

Unfortunately, the Strawhat-boy was too rash, and he hadn't wanted to stop and plan when Ivankov had told him they would help. Had the situation been different, had the marines been about to transport the Ace-boy at any time now, then they would be in a hurry, but with the Whitebeard Pirates attacking the prison everything was different. There wasn't much risk of the Ace-boy being moved when they couldn't get him out of the building, and working with what was already happening would be the best course of action.

Unfortunately, it seemed Monkey D. Luffy and plans just didn't work together.

Ivankov did wonder, in the rush of trying to explain _anything_ to the Strawhat-boy, how could Dragon's son be the little brother of Roger's son. Whatever the story behind it, it was a very interesting —and dangerous for the government— development.

Maybe it _was_ time to escape, after all.

Ivankov gave the orders for everybody who wished to escape with them to get ready and wait to move when the order was given —Mr. 2 would have to wait here until then, too, the poor guy had fainted from exhaustion— and then had to give the Strawhat-boy an adrenaline boost so he could get past the fatigue of the almost death experience for now.

That done, Ivankov, Inazuma and the Strawhat-boy headed out for level five. Had the circumstances at the prison been normal, they would probably not have cared about going unnoticed by the guards either way, but now, as things were, it was very unlikely anyone would be paying attention to the lower levels, what with the strongest crew in the world —and probably a good deal of their also strong allies— trying to enter the prison from above.

* * *

Those damn vermin were defiling Impel Down.

Magellan had just been informed that his men had intercepted a conversation between Whitebeard and Diamond Jozu a few minutes ago and now those damn pirates were not only assaulting the prison, but they were _freeing all the prisoners in it_.

His men were trying to get some more of their conversations in an attempt to find a way to stop those plans, and word had been sent out to the marines about it —Admiral Akainu had answered the call, and whatever he had said had been enough to make the guard talking to him faint. The weakling.

* * *

Sometimes, Buggy hated his luck.

He understood that Mr. 3's power was really useful, not only to open the cells but also to advance faster through the prison, he really did. So, of course, he had seen nothing wrong when Diamond Jozu told Mr. 3 to follow him and the men with him down to level three. Buggy was fine with that. He wasn't fine with what had happened afterwards.

"Why the _hell_ am _I_ here?!" he hissed at Mr. 3, in the middle of the group of Whitebeard Pirates that was headed to the giant hole connecting levels two and three that the sphinx had made yesterday.

"If I have to go, _you're coming_," Mr. 3 hissed back. When it became clear that he wouldn't get out of going —nobody was crazy enough to argue with a commander, and this one was plain scary, Buggy remembered seeing him fight years ago— the traitor had said Buggy had to come too. Buggy had been the only one to have a problem with that idea.

* * *

There was some noise coming from a different direction than the elevator, which was strange in itself and had the prisoners curious. There was a closed door aside from the elevator that apparently communicated with level five, but Ace had told Marco that the guards rarely used it. The food stores and kitchen were on level four, which was connected to this one straight through the elevator, and no one crossed through the freezing level five if they could avoid it.

Then what sounded like it had to be said closed door burst open, and a loud voice rebounded through the cavernous level six.

"AAAAAAACEEEEEEE! WHERE ARE YOU?! I'M HERE TO SAVE YOUUUUUU!"

Marco's head snapped up, and Ace moved so fast there was no way he hadn't hurt himself.

"LUFFY!" Ace yelled, his voice a mix of incredulity, wonder and _relief_ that Marco himself was feeling to some extent as well.

He had made it.

The crazy-ass kid had not only infiltrated Impel Down, but actually _managed to reach level six_.

In no time at all, a short, lanky boy covered in wounds and wearing a straw hat hanging from a cord around his neck had launched himself at the bars, immediately dropping in a half faint to the floor because said bars were made of kairoseki and he was a devil fruit user. And then, incredibly, Ace did something Marco wouldn't have expected.

He laughed.

Not the short and shallow chuckle Marco had heard from him the first day they had been brought food, but a full-throated sound that resonated through the entire cell. Strawhat Luffy —who was still on the floor and hadn't let go of the kairoseki cell bars— grinned.

"You're still an idiot," Ace said, and though Marco couldn't see his face he imagined the tremble in his voice meant there probably were tears there. Ace put his hand on top of his brother's and removed it from the metal, but didn't let go of it. "And crazy, and suicidal and, fuck, Luffy, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING COMING HERE?!" Ace suddenly yelled, letting go of Luffy's hand and crouching down to punch him through the wide spaces of the bars.

"Ow," Luffy said, laughing. He hadn't stopped grinning all the time, and now he sat up, turned to look at Ace and, heedless of the effect the bars would have on him, launched his arms through two openings to pull Ace into a bone-crushing hug. He probably wouldn't have been able to do it if his arms didn't stretch. Rubber fruit, Marco remembered.

Deflating from all his anger, Ace pressed himself against the bars to draw his brother in closer.

Marco turned his head away, but not before he noticed that Luffy was crying, and looked instead at the two people that had come with him.

He was surprised to realize he recognized them.

Emporio Ivankov and Inazuma from the Revolutionary Army.

_Well, this is interesting_. Ace had told him, during the long hours of the previous day, about the identity of Luffy's father.

Ivankov was looking back at him, while Inazuma fiddled with a handful of keys. They had come prepared, it seemed.

"Have they attacked already?" Marco asked, and almost chuckled at the reaction that earned him from the two revolutionaries.

"Hov vould you knov?"

Marco just grinned, and realization dawned on Ivankov's face.

"Oh, vell, it's come in handy," Ivankov said, then turned to Luffy, "Stravhat-boy, move back, ve're going to open the cell."

For a moment, it seemed like neither of the brothers were going to move, but then they pulled apart reluctantly.

Once Inazuma had the correct keys, opening the door took no time and Luffy darted inside —yelling Ace's name— to wrap himself around Ace, who didn't seem to mind at all the extra weight. Inazuma then bent down and tried a couple more of the keys before he found the good one for Ace's shackle.

"Can you get him free, too?" Ace, arms wrapped around Luffy, asked Inazuma, who nodded. That was when Luffy noticed Marco's presence for the first time.

Luffy, not moving from his position wrapped around his older brother, turned his head to look at Marco.

"Who're you?"

Inazuma dropped the keys, Ace staggered back and Ivankov's eyes, with the size of his head, reached a scary proportion. Marco blinked.

"WHAT?!" The exclamation didn't only come from the people inside and at the door of the cell.

"You can't be serious…" Ace muttered, taking a hand off Luffy's back to run through his hair. "Luffy, even _I_, in here, recognized him the moment they brought him in."

"Really? So he's famous?" The question was so carefree Marco had to chuckle. And he was _real_, one of the most promising rookies in years. Things would be interesting with him around, that was for sure.

"Stravhat-boy," Ivankov started, at around the same time that Inazuma composed himself enough to go back to try the keys on the numerous chains restraining Marco. "This man is Marco the Phoenix, First Division Commander of the Vhitebeard Pirates."

Luffy tilted his head to the side.

"Marco…? Buggy did mention that name."

Ace let go of Luffy and took a step back to look him in the face.

"Luffy, please, tell me you know _who_ Whitebeard is, at least."

Luffy laughed.

"Nope."

Ace groaned, slamming his hand against his forehead, and Marco burst out laughing. That gained him the attention of the other four.

"I like your brother," he told Ace as a way of explaining, still chuckling.

Said brother bounced over to him. There were only Marco's hands left to free now, and he was flexing his sore legs.

"So you're strong, then?"

"Very," Marco answered, almost chuckling again at the incredulous look Ivankov was giving Luffy. Marco's left hand was freed.

Luffy's grin grew.

"Cool. We'll need that to get out of here. There's a lot of marines."

"Don't worry about that, my crew is already taking care of them."

"Really?" Luffy asked, and his grin —it should have been impossible at this point— grew even more. "They came for you?" He seemed very pleased at that notion, and it only increased Marco's growing liking of him. He had his priorities straight.

The moment his right hand was free, Marco jumped to his feet and away from the kairoseki chains. He groaned when his powers came into action and healed all the damage his body had been subjected to.

"Let's get out of here, then."

They had barely stepped out of the cell when a loud crash made them turn around. The elevator was now smashed into its opening, effectively blocking that way out. Another loud bang and a heavy set of —undoubtedly kairoseki— iron bars had blocked the stairs.

"Damn, the guards noticed!" cursed Ivankov.

Just then, gas started to flood in through the spaces between the bars.

The other prisoners, who had been mostly silent up to this point —no doubt trying to understand what the hell was going on— started to complain.

"I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT IT IS!" Luffy yelled, going right for the gas before Ace could catch him and promptly falling asleep. Sleeping gas, then. It must be part of the security protocol. That wouldn't work on Marco, but it might prove to be a problem.

Or maybe not.

In a matter of seconds, Inazuma, whose hands had turned into giant scissors, had cut the ground and moved it to cover the entrance to the stairs before the gas could spread.

"Cool," Ace said from where he was kneeling next to Luffy, who stood up as if he hadn't been asleep a moment ago. There was something seriously off about his energy levels.

"Hey, but now we can't get out, crab-chan!" Luffy protested.

"There was no other method of stopping the gas. We can hardly escape if we are rendered unconscious," was Inazuma's answer, which Luffy didn't seem happy at all with.

"And now what?" Ace asked, standing up as well.

Marco looked up. The stone ceiling was hard, sure, but there was no trace of kairoseki up there.

"We go through the ceiling."

This time he was the one on the receiving end of the weird looks.

"How?" Luffy, not really surprisingly, didn't seem to find anything off with his statement.

Marco smirked.

"What, you think they call me The Phoenix for show?" And, in a moment, he was transformed and up in the air.

It felt amazing, being able to use his powers again. It was the best sensation in the world. This time it had been not like in previous occasions when he had been restrained by kairoseki; it had been so long that the void created by it, where he should be able to _feel_ that there was something else, some power inside of him, had begun to weigh him down.

He didn't need to turn into full phoenix form for this, in fact he would have to revert back to his hybrid form because that was the way he could deliver the strongest kicks, but he had missed his powers so much that he hadn't been able to resist. The astonished gasps from below were an added bonus.

* * *

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Remember, just remove the spaces :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Part IV**

Level three proved to be even slower to cross than the ground level and level one had been. The human guards weren't significantly more challenging here, but the beasts roaming the place and attacking anyone they saw were stronger than the gorilla guards had been.

And it looked as if all of them had been placed in the path between the stairs the pirates had come out from and the ones leading down to level four.

A loud crash made Vista turn and he saw that Jozu and his group had fallen through the hole in the ceiling —and Vista wondered how _that_ had happened. There were two prisoners with his brothers now, and he couldn't see Rakuyo, who had been in that group as well when they had separated earlier, anywhere.

He cut the throat of the human-faced lion he had been fighting —a lion that knew how to talk and had a fixation with repeating names of ramen— and approached the closest of the new arrivals.

* * *

Izo had left the control room to help moving the prisoners and ensure no one tried anything stupid. He had his guns out, a clear warning that he would shoot the first person who made a funny movement, and was currently shouting orders at the men and women climbing the stairs up from level one.

They had vacated a marine ship of its previous occupants, and Izo was sending the people in groups small enough that the crewmembers waiting there would be able to easily see everything each person in said group did or carried —mostly weapons taken from the downed guards, though some had stolen clothes and there was a guy who had found a bag of candy and was clinging to it possessively, glaring at anyone who so much as looked at the sweets.

From his position, Izo could hear Rakuyo's voice drifting up from the staircase; he was at the bottom of it organizing the prisoners as they arrived.

It was impressive, Izo thought looking over the group, how many people had been held captive in Impel Down.

* * *

"SIR, THIS IS TERRIBLE!"

Magellan cursed under his breath. He was starting to get tired of receiving reports from his subordinates, it was one bad thing after the other.

"What is it now?"

The guard came to a halt some distance away from him, and swallowed audibly before answering.

"It seems Strawhat Luffy has survived somehow, and, along with Emporio Ivankov and Inazuma —two level five prisoners who disappeared years ago— has managed to reach level six and free both Portgas D. Ace and Marco the Phoenix!"

"WHAT?! What are you waiting for?! Confine them!"

"We've tried, sir, but… they escaped through the ceiling."

Magellan clenched his fists, and all the guards around him jumped back when poison dripped to the floor. This was getting worse by the second, they couldn't allow neither of those prisoners to escape.

"Sadi-chan, go to level five and intercept them! Aim to kill!"

As things were now, it was useless to try to save Impel Down's honor. Ensuring justice was carried out was the main priority now. With that thought in mind, Magellan ordered one of the guards to bring him a den den mushi. If honor didn't matter, then they would go all out.

* * *

Ace stared at Luffy's okama friend, the one introduced as Bon-chan —and who had saved his little brother's life a couple of times according to Luffy, so Ace liked him a lot already— who was currently spinning madly after Emporio Ivankov had used his powers on him.

"You used that on Luffy, too?" he heard Marco ask Ivankov, who nodded. "That explains a lot."

Ace grinned. Luffy was full of energy, true, and that had seemed weird after the amount of fights he had no doubt been in since yesterday. Seeing the effect of those hormones, Ace had to admit it made sense Luffy was so energetic now.

They were on the freezing level five, where a group of Ivankov's people had met them —and they had brought Ace boots, which was amazing because the snow would've frozen his toes in minutes otherwise. Marco had said he didn't need boots because of his powers, and that he would retrieve his own shoes later. Most of the prisoners' belongings were kept on level four, Ace remembered.

That had earned Marco some incredulous looks from Ivankov's shivering people. Fishnets and corsets weren't appropriate gear for level five. Then again, neither was a paper-thin prison uniform.

"So, what's the plan?" Ace asked Marco and Ivankov, keeping an arm around Luffy's shoulders so that he wouldn't dart ahead of them.

"Ve met vith the Vhitebeard Pirates, I guess," Ivankov answered. "But…" he hesitated, and Ace could see an idea forming in his mind, "ve could shake things up a little, vhile ve're at it." He looked at Marco. "Hov many ships do you have?"

Ace thought he understood what Ivankov was thinking, and judging by Marco's smirk, so did he.

"Enough, probably," he answered, and turned to the large group. "Does any of you have a den den mushi?"

"Here," a man said, walking forward. The guy hesitated and looked down, "….Are you sure you don't want some shoes?"

"No, I'll get my sandals back." Marco took the offered communication device.

Ignoring the guy's pained look at his feet, Marco dialed a number he seemed to know by heart. When someone picked up on the other end of the line, he didn't wait for them to say anything before speaking.

"Hey, Pops, what do you say to a mass break?"

The person on the other end of the line —_Whitebeard_— laughed. Silence had fallen in their group, as everybody realized just _who_ Marco was talking to.

"We're already on it," answered a booming, amused voice. "It's good to hear you, son. How'd you get out?"

"A crazy kid beat us in assaulting the prison and got to level six."

Whitebeard laughed again. He didn't sound as solemn or serious as one would expect from a Yonko. Then again, very little of what Marco had told Ace about the crew was something one would expect from a crew of such infamy.

"He pulled it off?" Whitebeard didn't sound surprised, and that made Ace pause.

"Wait, you know about Luffy?" he said into the receiver before he could think better of it.

"Yeah, we've heard. You're Roger's kid?"

"Don't call me that," Ace growled, to general incredulity. Some of Ivankov's people were gesturing at him to just _shut up_. They looked nervous.

"He doesn't like Roger," Marco added.

"Oh, well." Whitebeard didn't sound bothered by Ace's rudeness —to general relief— and instead went into business. "Vista and Jozu are at level three now. We've already vacated levels one and two. Call them and organize things from there."

From behind Marco, Ivankov signaled to his people to start searching the cells. They all darted out, but Ace decided to stay and listen in on what was going on. As he was still holding onto Luffy, he stayed as well.

"What about the marines?" Marco asked.

"The Decalvan Brothers spotted them some twenty minutes ago: they're still two hours or so from here," answered Whitebeard.

* * *

When Vista's den den mushi sounded, Curiel shot the opponents aiming for him so he could answer the call without having to worry about other things.

"I hear you're busy."

That voice made every single Whitebeard Pirate in hearing range pause.

"MARCO?!" Vista's yell was echoed throughout the floor, and the fighting around came to an almost complete halt. Everybody, both pirates and guards, wanted to hear what was being said. The only ones who didn't care were the beasts.

"Don't sound so surprised," Marco, voice filled with amusement, answered. "How are things up there?"

"How did you— Oh, whatever."

Vista looked around in time to see Jozu punch the vice warden, Hannyabal, into a wall. It seemed he had tried something. Hannyabal's action was enough to snap most of the guards out of it, and the fighting resumed. Vista walked away from the thick of it to talk to Marco, but he kept his eyes out for any attack.

"We've almost conquered level three. I'm going to send some guys to free prisoners now."

Saying that, he gestured to Blenheim to do just that, and he dragged Mr. 3 and Buggy, who had been masterfully avoiding taking part in the fight, away to the cells. It had taken Vista a while to remember, but Buggy's face had seemed familiar: he was the guy who used to run around with Red Hair back in Roger's crew. Life was curious.

"Yeah, Pops said you were doing that."

So Marco had already talked to Pops. That was good, it must have cheered the guys up on the surface a lot.

"Where are you?"

"Level five."

"Oh, great, can you see if—?" he cut himself, remembering one of the things he had been told. "Wait! There's someone in level five you've got to find!" he exclaimed, and moved out of the way of some bullets. The guard who had attacked him was promptly taken down without Vista having to do anything.

Marco chuckled on the other side of the line.

"Strawhat Luffy is already with me. How do you think I got out?"

"They're looking for me?" a confused, slightly childish voice asked at the same time, and was immediately followed by another.

"Don't interrupt, Luffy."

"Hey, is that Roger's kid?"

"Will you lot stop with that?! I don't want anything to do with that bastard!"

Strawhat laughed.

"Now it's Ace who's interrupting."

"Shut it, Luffy."

Vista felt like he was listening to something surreal in the middle of the fighting, and a look around proved that he wasn't the only one. Everyone in hearing range had a somewhat put out expression. There were two kids in the middle of level five of Impel Down, hundreds of enemies and a battle above them, bickering as if nothing was wrong in the world.

"Stop it, both of you." And Marco sounded more amused than anything else.

"Oh, whatever. Look around to see if there's anyone worth freeing down there and then go up. We'll meet you in level four. I think the strong guys are there, so be careful." He added that more for the kids' sake than anything else, but felt it wouldn't be a good idea to voice the thought out loud.

"That reminds me…" Marco muttered. "Is everybody listening?"

"Yes."

"Good. Stay away from Magellan, all of you. That goes for the commanders, too, I don't care if you can beat him, he's _mine_."

That earned startled and frankly astonished reactions from all the still conscious guards around. It seemed that none of them could conceive there was someone who would want to fight their boss voluntarily. Not that Vista couldn't understand their reactions —he had heard enough stories about Magellan's powers to know he must be terrifying to most people— but their faces were still amusing.

"Don't take too long, then, or I can't promise anything."

Before either of them could speak, there was a yelp at the other end of the line. It was Strawhat's voice.

"You okay, Luffy?!" Ace exclaimed, sounding obviously worried.

"IT'S COLD!"

"You just noticed?!"

Vista decided to ignore _that_. Marco was chuckling.

"Hurry up, will you?" Vista said on the receiver, and hung up. If the idiots had time to fool around, then everything was going well on that front.

* * *

"Ahhh, I was sick of that cell…" he said, stretching his arms as he stepped out of the space that had confined him for the last few years. "Eternal boredom can make a man want to die… But you'd better not be telling me to work now only to throw me back in a cell later, Magellan."

"You are a death row prisoner on postponed sentence. You get no more chances," came Magellan's answer through the den den mushi.

"I see… I'll keep that in mind."

"Your sword, Head Jailer Shiliew," said one of the guards, offering him his precious weapon.

"I leave the prisoners on level five to you," were Magellan's next words.

"Roger that," he answered before Magellan hung up. He partially unsheathed his sword. "Ah, blade, it has been a while…"

Before the confused guards could react in any way, he had cut them.

That felt good.

* * *

A quick sweep of level five later, and their makeshift army had increased considerably. Ace had joined the search after Marco had finished his calls, and had based his decision on whether or not to let the prisoners out mostly on their reactions upon seeing Marco, though he had also decided to let a couple in their cells —plus a few punches— because they had recognized Luffy and laughed at him, surprised that he had survived.

"You were _poisoned_?!" he yelled at Luffy afterwards, and the brat had the nerve to laugh.

"It's fine, Bon-chan got me to Iva-chan and Iva-chan saved me."

After hitting Luffy —with haki, or the rubber idiot wouldn't have felt a thing— Ace turned to said two okamas and bowed deeply to them.

"Thank you for saving my stupid brother."

"Don't mention it, Ace-boy," Ivankov waved his hand, and then turned to the group. "If ve're done, let's get out of here, my candies!"

Ace paused. He had loved candy as a child, he remembered that, but was unable to remember what it had tasted like. He really wanted to know, now.

"Man, I want to eat candy," he muttered.

Luffy grinned at his side.

"We'll get it," Marco told him from his other side.

Inazuma took care of the doors separating the cells of level five from the rest of the prison, and leaving the frozen place was a relief. Ace suspected the only reason he hadn't been too bothered by the low temperature was the rush of adrenalin running through his body ever since Luffy had shown up at level six. The group came to a halt right outside the door, however, because there was someone waiting for them.

Four beings: three… animals of some sort carrying huge weapons and a tall woman clad in pink leather clothes that didn't leave much to imagination.

According to the panicked reactions of both the newly released prisoners and Ivankov's followers, they were Sadi-chan and three of her four Demon Guards. Ace whistled. He had heard about them, but never actually met them in person. They were rumored to be strong.

Sadi-chan began to say something or another about not letting them escape. There were some moans —really?— and mentions of torture thrown into her speech.

"More animals?" asked Luffy, annoyed.

"You've encountered them before?"

"Yeah, Bon-chan and I beat some weird cow thing on level three."

"You beat the Minotauros?!" someone nearby yelled.

"Whatever, let's not lose time," Marco said, and made to move towards them. Ace grabbed him by the arm.

"Oh, no! You said you wanted Magellan, so leave those for the rest of us!"

Marco paused and looked at him, an eyebrow up.

"You want to fight them?"

"Yeah!" the two brothers answered at the same time, to some comments about craziness from the nearby prisoners.

"All yours, then, brats," Marco said, and smirked.

"Who are you calling brats?!" Ace complained, but didn't waste any time in going for the closest animal, one that looked somewhat like a zebra.

"Hey, Ace!" Luffy called. "Bet'cha I'm stronger than you now!"

"Like hell you are!"

* * *

Jozu rolled down the stairs connecting levels three and four, body covered in diamond to maximize the damage he caused.

Once they had opened the door to the staircase, they had found themselves faced with an enormous squad —a thousand, they claimed to be— of mask-wearing guards armed with bazookas loaded with gas. A quick look exchanged between the commanders and they had decided on the quickest course of action to defeat their opponents without giving them time to shoot their ammunition.

Jozu had turned his whole body into diamond and had curled into a ball. Then Blenheim had kicked him down the stairs.

He came to a halt shortly after crashing through the door at the bottom, and stood up to find himself on a stiflingly hot space, its floor hot to the point that it would have burned his feet if he hadn't been wearing shoes, and packed to the brim with armed guards. Farther down in the room stood the imposing figure of Chief Warden Magellan.

"Well," Jozu said, cracking his knuckles, "let's do this."

* * *

Marco stood back and let his companions take care of the enemies. Ivankov had gone straight for the woman referred by the prisoners as Sadi-chan, turning himself into a woman in the process. Inazuma was fighting one of the beasts —it looked somewhat like a rhinoceros— and Ace and Luffy were fighting the other two —minozebra and minokoala, according to the baffled audience that didn't seem to believe the guards were actually losing— all the while throwing jabs and compliments at each other.

They weren't half bad.

Ace had a very good mastery of haki, but was in some serious need of muscle mass and also had to improve his reflexes, both expected consequences of the poor diet and of having been limited to training by himself, without even a partner and in such a confined space.

Luffy, meanwhile, was strong and pretty fast for a pirate of his level, but didn't seem to have any control of haki whatsoever. Marco would bet he had it, or would be able to have it easily at the very least, but doubted he had ever been told he could use it.

Deciding the fights were more than taken care of, Marco turned to the watching prisoners.

"Move ahead to level four." He didn't even need to shout the order to be obeyed as, as soon as the fights moved and the stairs up were vacated, the group began to run in that direction.

"GIANT PISTOL!" Everybody turned at that shout, to see Luffy launching a punch at his opponent, his arm somehow large enough that it could have passed as the arm of a giant.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" The yell came from somewhere further up the stairs, but Marco ignored it. He grinned.

Not half bad, really.

Then, his opponent defeated, Luffy shrank back to normal size, and then kept on shrinking until he was a misshapen midget that didn't reach even Marco's knees.

"…Really, what's _wrong _with this guy?"

"What was that?" Ace, his own opponent fallen at his feet, asked.

"Gear Third," answered the Luffy in an oddly shrill voice. "Let's go!" he yelled, and took off at a run towards the stairs.

"Hey, wait!" yelled Ace, running after him as did Ivankov and Inazuma, who were also done with their fights —Sadi-chan was now hanging from the ceiling, tied up in a decidedly uncomfortable-looking position. Marco moved to follow them, but stopped before he had taken more than a couple of steps.

Ace and some of the others present stopped as well.

"Who's that?" Marco asked. It was a strong presence what he could feel approaching, and he remembered it from level six. That couldn't be good, they hadn't let anyone else out down there.

"That's Shiliew," Ace answered, and he turned around jerkily.

The door to level five was still open, but no one could be seen through it yet, though it was easy to feel Shiliew approach.

"T-The jailer?" someone asked, fearful.

Marco had heard the rumors, but hadn't thought twice of Shiliew's presence. He was a prisoner, after all. Magellan must be truly desperate.

"Who?" asked Luffy, the only one who hadn't reacted to the name.

"Very bad news," Inazuma told him.

Marco turned around and walked closer to the door to level five.

"Go ahead to level four and get away from the entrance as fast as you can."

"What? Are you going to fight him?!" Ace asked, and he didn't look pleased at all.

"Don't worry, I'm stronger." He could tell as much by the presence he felt, but that didn't mean Shiliew wasn't incredibly strong. A fight between them could drag out, which meant he would have to get creative or they risked being still here by the time the marines arrived.

"Okay, I'm staying too," Ace said, which was absolute nonsense.

Marco turned to glare at him. The men behind Ace backed away, but Ace didn't move an inch.

"Don't be an idiot. Go up there and warn Vista —tall, top hat and with an impressive moustache— to get ready. Clear the floor of enemies as fast as you can. We are going to lose some time here." Ace looked like he was going to protest, so Marco decided to use an argument he thought might convince him. "This is my fight, don't butt in."

He didn't look happy, but at least Ace relented.

"Oh, and get my things while you're up there. A golden belt and sandals."

That earned him a glare, but Marco just grinned at him. Ace turned around and began to run up the stairs again.

The group had just disappeared from sight on the stairs when a tall figure started to grow larger in the distance, hard to see amongst the snow inside level five, and it became clearer as the man approached. He was blond and was dressed in a uniform very similar to Magellan's, only that over it, he wore a long white coat hanging from his shoulders.

Shiliew stopped at the threshold of level five.

"Marco the Phoenix…" he said, and sounded pleased at seeing him. Marco could see the bloodlust in his eyes. "Can't say I'm disappointed at seeing you here."

Marco didn't bother to answer, instead moving to attack right away. He was in a hurry here.

* * *

The guards, Vista decided, were doing an impressive job of dragging out the fight. For starters, Magellan was staying out of it for now, which most likely meant he didn't plan to attack until everyone else had fallen, and fighting that man was undoubtedly a tricky affair, what with the poison and all that.

The room being so full meant they couldn't all charge in at once, and even then the guards were moving so that immediately after taking down one, another would take their place.

This level, contrary to the upper ones, didn't have any hallways, but was instead a huge cavern with the cells caved in the walls and walkways connecting them, and there was a pit of boiling blood taking up a good part of the central area that limited their movements somewhat, as did the fires burning in various places.

Tired of going one enemy at a time, Vista raised his swords and released a flying cut that got rid of a good thirty of them, emptying enough space for the remaining members of the crew to be able to enter before the guards could move in.

Now, with everybody inside, they could advance much faster.

"Stay away from the center!" he yelled, because he didn't want anyone to be caught off guard and thrown in there.

The guards, too, seemed reluctant to move the fight there, probably for the same reason.

A loud bang startled most of the occupants of the floor and they saw the door that led to what must be the stairs going down to level five burst out of its hinges. It flew into the room and crashed onto a group of guards that couldn't get out of the way fast enough.

Through the opening came what could be defined as a small battalion, quickly filling the somewhat less occupied space over that area. It was led by a man with a monstrously huge head who Vista was surprised to be able to identify as the member of the Revolutionary Army Emporio Ivankov, the boy he could recognize from the newspaper as Portgas D. Ace and… some weird midget that barely stood two feet high and whose proportions were seriously wrong. As Vista stared, the guy grew until he transformed into the form of the rookie Strawhat Luffy.

_What the hell…?_

Looking around, he frowned when he couldn't spot Marco anywhere, but he did notice the Ace kid making a beeline for him. He moved to meet him halfway, cutting guards out of the way.

"Hey! You're Vista?!" Ace asked, and kicked a guard before coming to a halt next to him.

"Yes."

"Okay, listen. Marco is down there fighting Shiliew, the former Head Jailer who is strong as fuck." Yes, Vista knew of him. That didn't sound good. "He said to tell you to get ready, and to clear this place as quick as possible."

Vista's eyes slid over to Magellan, who still wasn't partaking on the fight. If they were in even more of a hurry than they had already been, that meant a change of plans. There were still hundreds of guards standing here, it was as if every one of them had been put in this room.

"I can help with the second part," Ace said, cutting through his thoughts.

"How?"

"I have haoshoku haki," he said, grinning. He hesitated, "but I don't know if I can differentiate your guys from the guards."

Well, now that was useful, and easy to solve.

"Well, then…" Vista took a deep breath, "EVERYONE WHO'S NOT A COMMANDER GO TO LEVEL THREE! THAT GOES FOR THE NEWCOMERS TOO!" He paused. "EXCEPT STRAWHAT, IVANKOV AND THE SCISSORS GUY!" Said scissors guy was cutting through the stone walls of the cells, circumventing the kairoseki bars to let out prisoners.

The Whitebeard Pirates, as well as the two prisoners they had brought down with them and the newly freed ones, didn't hesitate to follow his order, but everyone else needed a second order from Ivankov to obey before they ran towards the door to level three. The guards were confused by this change of tactic, but tried to stop them, because whatever reason they had to do this probably wasn't a good one for them.

"That's Inazuma," Ace informed him, referring to the scissors guy. Then he looked around. "Hey, where's the chief's office?"

"I think it's on the other end of the floor, why?"

"Because he keeps there the stuff they confiscate from the prisoners, and the idiot downstairs asked me to get his things."

Vista smiled. It looked like Marco had made a friend.

There were a lot of guards in that area, too —according to what Izo had seen on the maps of the prison, the office led to another path down to level five, so of course they would try to protect it— and it wouldn't matter where in the floor Ace was anyway.

"Let's go over there, then. I'm guessing the belt is one of those things, and he'll get pissy if he loses it."

Next to him, Ace snickered.

* * *

Blenheim had called to inform about the change of plans, and Rakuyo had now moved to the other staircase, the one that connected level one with levels two and three, to direct the prisoners to the first staircase. Atmos was now at that one, and Izo was still upstairs on the ground level.

He stopped the first of his brothers who came up the stairs.

"What happened?" He knew about the change in plans, but not the reason behind it. Blenheim had been very brief in his call.

"I'm not sure. Vista talked to Roger's kid, Ace, and then told us to leave. Also, Marco wasn't there when the group from downstairs came to level four."

That didn't sound good. Not good at all. He would call them again, but maybe it would be best to wait until he didn't have some two hundred escapees to deal with.

He really hoped Marco was alright.

* * *

As soon as the pirates had moved to retreat, Magellan had decided to enter the battle. He hadn't expected it to be easy, and wasn't surprised when his path was cut by Diamond Jozu. The man was annoying, he was fast for someone his size, and was doing an amazing job of using his powers to block Magellan without actually letting his body be touched by the poison.

It was really hard to destroy diamond, and it took much more effort than he was comfortably making in the current situation. He was thrown forward when a powerful shot hit him on the back. Turning his head, he saw another of the commanders —Tenth Division Commander, Curiel— holding a bazooka aimed at him. Of course, he couldn't expect this scum to fight fairly. The man was out of his fighting range at the moment, but if he moved there he would leave his back open to his other opponent.

He always had the option of using the hydra, even the venom demon, but those were last resort attacks at the moment. Magellan was no idiot: this floor was full of people who could take on his attacks with much less trouble than Strawhat Luffy had been able to, and who would also last much longer in a fight. There was also the very likely possibility that some of them —and here his eyes slid to Flower Sword Vista, because he was the most probably option— were haki users, in which case he could even lose.

It was true, however, that the guards were no match for the five Whitebeard Pirates' commanders currently on this floor, but that didn't necessarily render them entirely useless either. Besides, if the guards stayed here, they would all just die anyway.

Maybe he should do the same thing the pirates had done.

"GO TO LEVEL THREE, ALL OF YOU! PURSUE THEM!" he ordered as soon as he noticed his men had been unable to prevent the enemy from fleeing level four.

They never had a chance to follow his order, because then a strong burst of energy swept the place and three quarters of the guards, as well as many of the still imprisoned criminals, lost consciousness.

Turning to the point where the energy had come from, he saw Portgas D. Ace standing there next to Vista, Marco the Phoenix's shoes and belt in one hand and a huge grin on his face.

"Hey, he's good," he heard one of the remaining pirates comment, and Magellan had to reluctantly agree. He had forgotten Garp had taught the brat to do that. At the moment, it hadn't mattered, because he was trapped until his execution and that skill wouldn't be nearly enough if it ever crossed his mind to try to escape, but now Magellan realized letting Garp teach him how to use haki had been a grievous mistake.

"GET THEM OUT OF HERE!" he ordered to the few conscious guards, who hurried to move their fallen comrades out of the way. Strangely, the pirates didn't stop them, but Magellan knew they _would_ if the guards tried to go to level three, and so few wouldn't be able to even reach the stairs. It would be best to wait a little. Until the pirates weren't paying attention.

Besides, level three shouldn't be entirely unprotected by now.

They stood at a standstill after that, and in the silence that filled level four now that all the previous noise had faded Magellan could hear something else that had gone entirely unnoticed before. Through the destroyed doorway to level five, the sounds of a fight reached his ears, and he had barely noticed it when two figures flew in through the open space, taking part of the upper doorframe with them as they did so.

Shiliew fell to the floor and rolled around before jumping to his feet, while Marco the Phoenix flew away from the Shiliew's crashing place, blue flames spreading all over his torso and erasing all traces of an attack that to almost anyone else would have been deadly, but that didn't seem to faze him at all.

"All yours!" Marco yelled, and Magellan barely had time to see all five of the Whitebeard Pirates' commanders that had already been here charge at Shiliew before he had to raise an arm to block a kick that still made him skid back a good two feet.

Looking at the smirking pirate suspended in the air above him, Magellan thought that he should have used the hydra, after all. Now, against this man, his poison was useless.

* * *

"Hey, your friend's cool," Luffy, who at some point after the guards fainted had come to stand next to Ace, commented.

Ace had to agree, because he had trouble following some of Marco's movements —he couldn't be blamed, as he wasn't exactly used to watching people fight, much less at such speed.

"I tried to do that when I fought Magellan," Luffy said.

"Huh? Do what?"

"Attack fast so he wouldn't use that hydra attack, but the poison affected me and I couldn't move. It doesn't seem to bother Marco."

"Oh." Ace really didn't want to think about his little brother fighting Magellan. Luffy was _fine_, and that was all that mattered. "Yeah, well, Marco's power allows him to recover from anything. Poison's useless against him."

"Cool."

At the other side of the room, the rest of the commanders were fighting Shiliew all at once. It wasn't really fair on him, who, surrounded as he was, was having some trouble just blocking all the attacks aimed at him —swords, shots and deadly-looking punches all at once— but it wasn't like he deserved his opponents to be fair or anything, given the reason he had landed his ass in a cell on level six.

There was also the little detail that pirates weren't known for being fair.

* * *

The minotaur. The _freaking _minotaur —that should be in intensive care after its fight with Strawhat— had appeared in the way of the group of fleeing criminals.

Buggy had been very glad —he might even have wept with joy a little bit— when they had finally been told they could leave the hellish level four, and both he and Mr. 3 had been of the first to run up the stairs. Level three had been cleared on their way down, and it should have been simply a matter of running across it and then up the stairs to safety and freedom. But, of course, life wouldn't been that kind and the minotaur had jumped in their way —crushing some poor bastards from level four that had been even faster than Buggy in running— and was now attacking them.

There was no Whitebeard Pirates' commander with them now, and the rest of the crewmembers were having some serious trouble simply trying to fend the thing's attacks off. The Demon Guards _were_ the most dangerous of the guards of Impel Down after Magellan and Hannyabal themselves, and being part of the strongest crew in the world didn't make someone immediately a monster. These guys might be able to take on the average guards easily, but a crazy monster was a different matter.

Some prisoners were helping them fight it —Mr. 2 was spinning and kicking with such an energy it was dizzying to look at him— but most of them were just trying to find a way to escape.

Buggy was currently running —his feet on the ground while the rest of his body floated at a height he hoped was out of reach of the minotaur— and trying to look for an opening to dash for the stairs. So far three groups of prisoners had tried it, but the minotaur was impossibly fast, and they all had been slaughtered.

This didn't look good.

Then he heard some yelling, and saw a group of twenty guards running at them from the direction of the stairs to level four.

"WHAT ARE THOSE IDIOTS DOING?!" he yelled, because _how_ had those guards escaped the monster group fighting them downstairs was something he couldn't understand.

* * *

Vista jumped back when Shiliew took advantage of the smallest lull in the attacks to charge at him, taking advantage of the time he had used to dodge to break free from the circle of commanders that had formed around him.

A quick glance sideways proved that Marco had already drawn Magellan far enough that his poison —sans some seriously big attacks— wouldn't reach them. Then he drew both swords up, blades crossed, to block Shiliew's next attack. He sidestepped and moved out of the way as Blenheim aimed his own sword at Shiliew's side.

Shiliew blocked the attack, their blades locked for a moment, and he jumped back, moving farther from them.

"If we were under different circumstances," Vista said, because it had already been established that Shiliew was a very good swordsman, "I would love to have a proper duel with you."

"Feeling's mutual there," Shiliew said around his cigar, "but you guys seem to be in a hurry."

* * *

"Hey, what're those guys doing?"

Ace turned to look at where Luffy was pointing and noticed a group of guards slipping through the door to the stairs that went up to level three. A quick look around proved that many of the unconscious guards had been moved out of the way —most squeezed into the few rooms around the level's main area or propped up against the walls— and there was no conscious guard in sight. He could only see Ivankov and Inazuma, who had climbed on a makeshift ramp created by the latter, opening the cells higher up in the level.

"Those bastards…" he growled, realizing they had taken advantage of the fights to leave. "Let's go!"

He grabbed Luffy by the arm and headed for the same door the guards had left through.

* * *

Marco noticed the two brothers leaving, and that was when he realized the guards were absent.

He kicked a ball of poison that had been aimed at him into the pool of boiling blood and grinned at Magellan, unhindered by the difficult terrain of level four as he had his arms turned into giant blue wings at the moment.

It could be a problem, he thought, if those guards caught up with the escaping prisoners —and some of his brothers with them, too— before they could reach level one, but he thought Ace and Luffy would be able to handle it. Those two had proven to be strong.

He kicked Magellan on the chest, sticking out the tip of his tongue when the man managed to avoid crashing into one of the many fires spread throughout the floor, and out of the corner of his eye caught sight of some of the remaining prisoners that had been held on level four heading for the stairs, every conscious person carrying an unconscious one. Most of them looked like they would much rather drop their charges, but Ivankov, whose head had grown considerably since the last time Marco had seen him, was doing a great job of scaring them into obeying.

At this rate, if any of those people were fit to fight, Ace and Luffy would have reinforcements in no time, too.

* * *

Donquixote Doflamingo was having a splendid day.

He hadn't cared at all about who would win the battle, and if he was honest, he hadn't planned to take much part in it either aside from having some fun here and there. When Sengoku had yelled for everybody to get into a ship and head for Impel Down, he had burst out laughing, surprised at the development.

Now, though he hadn't really _done_ anything, he couldn't say he wasn't having fun. The reports coming in from Impel Down had been each better than the previous one, and watching the marines panic and run around like headless chickens was priceless.

It had been almost an hour, now, since the last report had arrived, and seeing how each one had brought worse news for the government, he could only guess the reason behind the lack of information was that Impel Down no longer had any guards they could spare for the task.

That was an amusing thought, but it didn't change the fact that, without news, things were growing dull. The marines were restless, unable to do anything now that they had reached the Gates of Justice of Impel Down, but couldn't cross them without authorization from the prison, and Doflamingo was starting to grow bored.

A look around showed him that Tsuru —who had been giving him warning looks the entire trip— was busy on the den den mushi, and Doflamingo thought this would be a good moment to have some fun. Locating an unsuspecting marine that would do nicely, he aimed his finger at the man and muttered:

"Parasite."

Time to play.

* * *

Fighting guards was easier than fighting the minotaur, Buggy could accept that much, but it was still troublesome. Sure, he had his powers that made him immune to any kind of cutting weapon, but there were still the guns to worry about. And the fact that the only people armed on their side were the Whitebeard Pirates. The unconscious guards on this floor had been cleared of all weapons already by the time their group had arrived, so no one had been able to get weapons. The other prisoners may be from level four, but they were tortured, malnourished and weakened and that was very noticeable. Many didn't even have the spirit to want to fight.

And the guards just kept coming. They had killed some, but there must be forty here still. And the minotaur, let's not forget the minotaur.

Buggy jumped behind the wax barrier Mr. 3 had created, barely managing to get out of the way as the minotaur moved to attack some poor bastard. That thing was _fast_.

The minotaur flew over him again, but this time it crashed into the bars of a cell instead of landing or attacking someone. Blinking, Buggy and Mr. 3 stood up and looked over the edge of the wax barrier. There stood Strawhat, fists raised and skin a strange shade of pink —was that steam rising from his body?— grinning next to a taller dark haired guy dressed in a prisoner uniform. He had to be around twenty, had freckles and was grinning as well. There was something familiar about that grin.

Was that captain Roger's son?

* * *

A scream broke through level four. Ivankov, who had just ensured the most recent group of escapees reached the stairs —not everybody was out, there had been people who they hadn't wanted to free, and even one crazy guy with his chest tattooed who had refused to leave— turned and saw that Shiliew had managed to throw one of the commanders into the pit of boiling blood. Jozu had trapped Shiliew's sword in his diamond-encased hand, and both he and Blamenco —the Sixth Division Commander, who had pulled a giant hammer out of somewhere— were holding him back while Blenheim and Vista, both of them not devil fruit users, pulled a now severely burned Curiel out of the burning liquid.

A flash of blue light made Ivankov turn around. Marco had transformed again into full phoenix form and was wrapped around the upper part of Magellan's body. The hydra was formed but unmoving, and, as Magellan's visible hands twitched, it started to lose its shape and fall.

Ivankov aimed a Hell Wink at it, diverting its descent so none of the heads would fall onto the other fight, and instead the poison flew in the direction of Magellan's office.

"Inazuma, help me!" It was Marco, and as he said it, he took flight, carrying a mostly unmoving Magellan with him, and headed for one of the now open cells. There were steady lines of blood falling down Magellan's body and on the floor, where they sizzled upon impact. There was no doubt the blood was poisonous.

* * *

As soon as Curiel was out of the blood —he was breathing, he was alive and that was the most important fact at the moment— Vista charged at Shiliew, who had just managed to free his sword from Jozu's grip. Their blades clashed.

"Blenheim, Blamenco, get Curiel to the ship," he ordered, and then his eyes slid to Ivankov. He had heard the stories about his powers. He didn't know how serious Curiel's injuries were —burns were very tricky— and he would rather make sure his brother was as well as possible. "Can you accompany them, Emporio Ivankov?"

"Of course, vhat do you take me for?"

* * *

Inazuma closed the stone walls of the cell and reinforced them with fragments of the surrounding ones, effectively imprisoning a now mostly unconscious Magellan.

Magellan had deep marks of talons on his neck and the upper area of his chest, the wounds still bleeding —he had lost entire chunks of flesh, that had fallen to the floor the moment Marco had let go of him, and if both claws had been aimed to his neck he would most likely have been beheaded. Had he been free, his body's poisonous nature would have begun to stem the flow of blood by now, but they had shackled him with a pair of kairoseki handcuffs left in the cell by one of its previous occupants.

Inazuma guessed Magellan's survival depended on how long help would take to arrive. He couldn't say he cared one way or another.

"Thanks," Marco told him right before jumping down, arms turning into huge wings mid-jump.

Inazuma stood where he was, watching as Iva-san left with three commanders while two more still fought Shiliew.

Marco headed in that direction, and Shiliew was forced to twist around to block the kick aimed at his neck. He was fast enough to step out of the way of Vista's two blades, but a spear made of diamond pierced him through the stomach. Marco grabbed Shiliew's sword with his bare hands before the man could swing it and then, held as he was, Vista cut him across the chest.

Shiliew dropped down.

"I hate using this sort of move," he heard Jozu said after his body was back to normal.

"We're in a hurry," Marco, hands covered in blue fire, reminded him. "Where do we stuff him?"

Inazuma jumped down and cut a ramp up to one of the most isolated cells, away from Magellan's.

"This should do."

Marco grabbed Shiliew by the leg and started to drag him along. Vista, meanwhile, took Shiliew's blade and contemplated what to do with it. Inazuma had the feeling that he was tempted to just throw it into the boiling blood, but finally placed it on the ground again.

* * *

Luffy kicked the cow straight in the face before it could get close enough to hit him. He could have used Gear Third, and the battle would have been over in a moment, but he was fighting it alongside his brother and he had missed fighting with Ace, so he stuck to using only Gear Second. He thought Ace was holding back a little, too, because he had beaten the animal downstairs as quickly as Luffy had.

Ace was good. He was strong —stronger than he looked— and dodged attacks with ease. It was almost as if he knew where they were going to hit. It reminded Luffy of what Enel and the priests did back in Skypiea.

Meanwhile, Marco's crewmembers were fighting the guards. Now that they didn't have to worry about the cow, the guards were going down fast. As guards were defeated, some of the prisoners took their weapons and joined in the fighting as well, which made everything go faster.

He heard a commotion, saw some people stop fighting to turn around, and looked in that direction. He saw two of the really strong guys from downstairs carrying a third one who was burned really badly. Iva-chan was running behind them. That distracted their crewmembers —of course it did, if it was one of his friends, Luffy would have forgotten about his own fight too.

He saw them stop for a moment to look at what was going on here, and the cow tried to get past Luffy then. He kicked it and sent it flying, and Ace intercepted it mid-flight and punched it into the ground.

"We got this!" Luffy yelled at them. The others, too, were back to fighting the guards. Even Buggy and Three —and Luffy was glad to see they were okay— had thrown in a couple of attacks. Bon-chan was still spinning around, all energetic and kicking enemies.

* * *

Marco flew up the stairs ahead of his three companions, but slowed down when he noticed that the fight on level three was almost wrapped up. Only a few guards remained somewhat standing —and not all that firmly, for that matter— and there was another one of those animal guards knocked out on the floor. Looking at it, one would think it had been used as a punching bag by a monster in training or something. When he saw Luffy and Ace happily beating the remaining guards, Marco guessed that comparison wasn't too far from the truth.

He transformed back into his human form and landed on top of a guard. The guy hit his head when he collided with the ground.

"You done over here?" he asked the crowd as he stepped over the unconscious body.

The response he received was less enthusiastic than usual when they were in a fight. It made sense, of course, because Curiel had already been through here and that must have worried his brothers considerably.

He kicked another guard, and by the time Jozu, Vista and Inazuma caught up with them none of the guards there were left standing.

* * *

Whitebeard watched with worry as the nurses urged Blenheim and Blamenco to carry Curiel to the infirmary.

They had moved the ships, and now the Moby Dick was docked right before the gates, because Rakuyo had called as soon as Curiel had passed the staircase he was at to warn them to get ready. The Moby Dick had the best medical facilities out of all their ships.

Everybody had fallen silent at the group's arrival, and he could see his children on the other ships, even the rescued prisoners, piling on the decks to try to see what was happening.

"What happened?" he asked Emporio Ivankov, who had stayed behind after telling the nurses that they had his hormone-altering powers at their disposal if they were needed. For that, Whitebeard was grateful.

* * *

Ace stopped right outside of the beam of light that reflected on the floor and came in through the doors leading outside of Impel Down. By then, they had met with Izo's group, and everybody from the crew who remained in the prison was there.

Marco paused, and turned to look at Ace.

"What's wrong?" he asked. Luffy had stopped, too, and was also looking at him.

"Nothing. It's just..." Ace trailed off, eyes fixed on the muted light coming from outside.

And suddenly Marco understood.

This was the first time in seven years that Ace would step outside, that the wind would touch his skin, that he would see natural light —looking at what light entered the building, Marco could tell it was overcast outside, and he thought that was a good thing, as he didn't know how the full force of the sunlight would affect Ace so suddenly.

By then, everybody who hadn't dashed out of the prison was looking at them.

Marco smiled and extended a hand out to Ace.

"Let's get out of here."

Luffy was suddenly at Ace's side, grinning and taking him by the arm. Ace accepted Marco's hand and the three of them moved again.

Ace squinted when they approached the entrance door, but otherwise an expression of utter fascination took over his features.

Marco himself was immensely glad to be able to feel the wind and smell the sea, to see what the world had to offer. He couldn't imagine what Ace must be going through right now. He squeezed his hand.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part V**

The world faded around Ace.

Well, that wasn't a precise description. The _people_ faded around Ace. He was aware of Luffy holding his arm and of Marco holding his hand, but he couldn't pay them any attention, not when his senses were overwhelmed by all the sensations that assaulted them.

The light hurt his eyes. He knew it wasn't a bright day —he hadn't been isolated so long that he had forgotten about the sun; even if he didn't remember what a bright sunny day looked like, he did remember they were much brighter than a day in which the sky was covered by grey clouds. Despite the relative lack of brightness, though, there was so much more light here than at any given moment down on level two that Ace had to raise his free hand —the one of the arm Luffy was holding onto— to cover his eyes. Luffy moved his hands to hold his upper arm now.

There wasn't any wind to hit his body, which made sense because they were in the Calm Belt —he had heard some stories about misfortunate adventures on the Calm Belt, and knew the wind never blew here— and so the sea was perfectly still. The sea. Ace had forgotten just how _special_ the sea was. He remembered wanting to be a pirate, and sitting on a cliff staring out at it for hours, but he hadn't remembered anymore what it felt like to look at it. There was something about the sea that just called out to it. Maybe it was the smell of it, or perhaps something else. He knew here he couldn't experience everything the sea had to offer. Suddenly, Ace wanted to be able to hear the waves, maybe see a seagull. He had never paid much attention to seagulls as a kid.

By the time he paid attention to his surroundings again, they were walking up some wooden steps at the rear of the group that had come out of the prison. It was then that Ace realized he was about to be surrounded by thousands of people —Marco had told him how big his crew was, and there were all the freed prisoners, too. He tensed, and stopped. The moment he had thought about it, he had become aware of all the presences surrounding him. It was overwhelming.

"You okay, Ace?" Luffy, who had stopped after climbing another step and noticing he wasn't moving, asked. His arm had stretched to keep his hold on Ace's elbow.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, lowering his hand. His eyes were getting used to the light.

"What's wrong?" Marco asked from his side.

"It's just… I've never been around so many people."

"Oh." Luffy looked serious all of a sudden. "Don't worry, Ace, I'll beat anyone who tries to bother you."

Ace blinked.

"That's not—" he cut himself off. He doubted he could just explain haki to Luffy, not without a demonstration or ten. "Thanks, but I don't think anybody's gonna attack me." He didn't add he could defend himself. If _this_ crew decided to attack, neither Luffy nor Ace would stand a chance anyway.

"Okay, then." Luffy began to tug them up the stairs again. He was three steps ahead, rubber arm creepily long.

"Can you handle it?" Marco asked him in a low voice.

"Yeah. I don't have a headache or anything. It just surprised me." Which was much better than when he had gotten his haki. With the limited instruction Gramps had been able to give him, Ace had spent a month with horrible headaches before he learned how to handle it.

And then they had taken the last step, and were now on the deck of a ship —the Moby Dick, one of the most famous vessels in the world, Ace remembered— surrounded by people who had all their eyes on them. Had Ace been anyone else, he would have backed away. Being himself, he straightened up.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, maybe a tense moment or awkwardness, but he hadn't been expecting what happened instead.

"Hey, Marco," someone called from the crowd, "how was imprisonment?"

"Boring."

And then they were swarmed by as much people as could reach them, good humor and somewhat subdued laughter all around. They were talking to Marco, but also to Ace and Luffy. There were so many words being spoken all at once that Ace couldn't make a single sentence out.

They were herded into the ship, where Ace could see some of the people who had participated in the attack —the guy in the kimono was hard to miss— and being attended by a group of nurses. Nurses dressed in short pink dresses and stockings with leopard print. A couple of guards and Hancock yesterday aside, Ace hadn't seen a woman in years, and these women, he could tell, were hot. His eyes zeroed on them and someone next to him elbowed him.

"Nice, eh?" asked the man, grinning at him.

Ace found himself grinning back. It wasn't so much the sight of the women as the fact that the realization of what was going on was finally sinking in. He was _out_. They had done it. He was out of Impel Down and he was _free_.

* * *

Marco looked at Luffy, who nodded at him from his place next to Ace as the nurses fussed over them, before walking away from the group.

Because of his powers, Marco was exempt of their mostly mandatory check-ups after a fight, and instead went to talk to Pops. The man was standing to one side right outside of the thick of the group.

"You look good, Marco."

"Of course I do." He stopped when he was standing next to his father. "How's Curiel?"

"He could be worse. He's going to live." There was immense relief in Whitebeard's voice when he said this. "Ivankov just headed down there to help speed up his recovery."

"That's good."

They fell silent, looking at the crowd. Some of the last prisoners to flee, including the wax guy and the one with the red nose, were on the ship as well, and they were now just sailing off of Impel Down with their stolen marine battleships. The order had been given as soon as they had made sure everybody was on board a ship.

"You have found a strange army," Whitebeard commented.

"It wasn't me, that's all Luffy."

"Luffy? You mean the Strawhat kid?" Marco nodded, and Whitebeard gave him a knowing look. "You like the kid, don't you?"

"He's got potential." Marco didn't say that often. He could call someone interesting, or even strong, but he rarely encountered anyone with the potential to be _great_. This last week, he had met two such people.

"And what about Ace?" Whitebeard made a half grin when he said the name, and Marco was sure he had been about to say 'Roger's son' instead. It seemed like, from the moment they had escaped, Ace had decided to drop his indifference and make it clear that he didn't like his biological father.

"He's got potential, too." He found Ace in the middle of the crowd. He could only see his face from where he stood, as well as the back of a nurse's cap before him. From here, Marco noticed Ace's cheeks were a slight shade of pink. He was _blushing_. Marco smirked and decided to point it out to him later.

As Whitebeard wasn't saying anything, and it wasn't really like him to stay silent for so long, Marco turned to look at him and found himself faced with another knowing look, only that this one was mixed with slight surprise.

"Seriously?"

"What?" Marco asked, unsure he understood what was going on.

"It's been a week, Marco," Whitebeard said, sent a very pointed look in Ace's direction and burst out laughing.

Marco blinked slowly, puzzled, before it clicked in place what this was about. He sighed. Sometimes he forgot that Edward Newgate wasn't only his father, but also his oldest and closest friend. He was the person who knew Marco the best in this world.

"Yeah, well, you can't blame me, I _really_ like him. Besides," he added once the laughing fit had subsided, "I'm almost convinced he's going to join the crew."

"You offered?"

"Of course."

"And what if I disagreed?" Whitebeard asked, but he was clearly amused.

Marco snorted.

"Pops, Ace is the sort of guy you would offer to join the crew even if he was trying to kill you."

* * *

Luffy liked the Whitebeard Pirates.

He had decided that when he had met Marco, because he didn't think someone like him would be in a bad crew, and meeting the members of the crew who had attacked the prison had only made him more sure of it. Now he had no doubt, he really liked these people.

They were a lot, and were all being very nice. A group of nurses —Sanji would love them, Luffy was sure, and Brook too— had come to check on them, and had been very surprised at Luffy's wounds, but let him be when he explained that Iva-chan had healed him with his powers. One of the nurses was now telling Ace that he should do some things to recover —exercise, not to be outside too long at first and that sort of thing— and that the most important thing of everything was to eat. Luffy nodded along, because that was very good advice.

She told Ace he shouldn't eat too much at first, though, which Luffy thought was stupid. Food helped to heal, so the more Ace ate, the faster he would recover.

* * *

When Blenheim entered the deck, conversations around halted, and he could feel every pair of eyes on him. He went to talk to Pops, who was with Marco close to where the nurses were checking on everybody who had come onto the ship. He had already gone through that; once Ivankov had used those strange powers of his on Curiel —he had said something about luckily Curiel not being nearly as far gone as Strawhat, and not needing extreme measures, and Blenheim wasn't sure he wanted to understand what he meant— he, along with Blamenco and Ivankov, had gone through the check up. Blamenco had some scratches that needed to be patched up, and Ivankov had decided to stay a little longer in case he needed to do something else, so Blenheim had come to update Pops.

He had already noticed the ship moving a while ago and known things were alright here, but felt glad all the same at seeing Marco standing there. This past week without him had been strange not seeing him next to Pops, it was sort of a given fact that whenever there was a serious situation, Marco was always there.

"How's Curiel?" Pops asked.

"Drugged, right now. He'll recover." A collective sigh followed this. "He woke up for a while, said we better save him some booze."

That lifted the mood considerably, and some conversations broke out.

"We're still throwing that party?" Marco asked next to Pops.

"Party?!" All of a sudden Strawhat was there and grinning so widely it had to hurt, Ace —it had become clear he _didn't _appreciate being called 'Roger's son'— standing behind him with a strange shine in his eyes. Blenheim wondered how long it had been since the poor guy had been to a party.

"It'll take a while, brat," Pops said, a grin on his face as he looked down at Strawhat. "We don't have anything ready."

"Aww, that sucks," and, much to the astonishment of almost everybody present, Strawhat started to pick his nose with his pinky finger.

Blenheim blinked. There he was, a rookie pirate, talking to the most feared pirate in the world not only as if Pops was just any normal person he didn't have anything to fear from, but with a blatant lack of respect that was hard to wrap one's mind around.

A quick look around showed he wasn't the only one staring in disbelief, and if the quirk on Pops' lips was anything to go by, he found Strawhat, at the very least, amusing.

"You're Whitebeard?" Strawhat asked, still picking his nose and still acting as if that name didn't have anything special. Blenheim's incredulity grew. He caught sight of Marco next to Pops, and he had a small grin on his face, the one that said 'I know something you don't and I'm laughing at you in my head right now'. It wasn't directed at Strawhat, it was directed at the crew. Before Pops could answer, Strawhat continued: "I'm Luffy, I'm gonna be the King of Pirates."

Right then, Blenheim's brain almost shut down. Not only was that one of the craziest statements he had heard in years, and delivered in complete seriousness, but there had been a _challenge_ in Strawhat's voice as he said it. He was daring Pops —_Whitebeard_— to argue with him.

_Is this kid insane?_

Pops laughed. There was an approving look on his face, the one that was usually followed by an invitation to join the crew. But the invitation never came, because, of course, the Pirate King had to be a captain on his own right.

Instead, Pops said:

"You've still got a long way to go then, brat," and laughed.

Strawhat —_Luffy_, better to call him by his name— laughed along with him, and both Marco and Ace chuckled too. It was obvious they had already known that little tidbit, because they were the only ones not boggling at the scene.

"While you get the party ready," Marco said, moving from his place, "I'm going to take a shower." He grabbed both Ace and Luffy by the collars of their shirts. "And these two will, too."

There was still silence by the time the three had disappeared through a door. It was Vista who broke it.

"What do we do?" He looked at Pops.

"We need to keep an eye out in case the marines show up," Pops decided, and then looked around. "Izo, take a group with you and get started on the party preparations."

Izo raised an eyebrow.

"You're not expecting me to cook, are you?"

Pops laughed.

"Nah, just make sure everything goes smoothly. Round up the cooks, too, they should get started."

Izo nodded. What no one mentioned was that the reason they needed Izo to supervise was because nobody had replaced Thatch as head cook and unofficial party planner of the crew. By the fallen expressions around, Blenheim knew he wasn't the only one who had thought of that.

* * *

Marco had led Ace and Luffy to a bathroom a couple of decks down from where most of the crew was, and left saying he would bring some clean clothes for them. Ace didn't doubt he would, but he was also sure that the main reason he had left was to give them some time alone. It was the first time since they had met, and Ace had to admit he was nervous. Now that they were alone and the adrenaline rush from the battle was over, Ace didn't know what to say.

Or maybe he did, and he was just afraid of doing so. Luffy would be angry, and Ace would really deserve it if he decided to beat him. Taking a deep breath, he turned to look at Luffy.

"Luffy, I—"

"I'm so glad you're okay," Luffy said before Ace could go any further, and, suddenly, he found himself with an armful of Luffy, his rubbery arms wrapped three times around him.

That shattered any reluctance Ace might have felt about saying what he needed to. He wrapped his arms around Luffy and buried his face in his neck, eyes squeezed shut.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Luffy."

"Why?" Luffy asked, and Ace realized he hadn't figured it out. He hadn't expected him to, but it would have made this easier.

He would have stepped back, at least to be able to see Luffy's reactions, but it was difficult to move away from his rubber limbs. And maybe a part of Ace felt comforted by the hug.

"That day, when I left—" he sighed, swallowed and decided to just spill it, "I knew I wasn't coming back. I'd talked to Gramps already and we'd decided on it."

Luffy didn't speak or move for what felt like an eternity. Ace waited, shoulders tense and arms clutching at Luffy's clothes, suddenly afraid he would let go.

"Why?" Luffy repeated finally, his voice smaller than before. Ace was reminded of something he hadn't ever forgotten, of a little boy laying face down at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, his oversized straw hat covering his face full of tears as he mourned one of his brothers. He closed his eyes.

"The marines —or the government, I don't know— figured out what Gramps had done. With me. Sengoku told him he could hand me over or they would come for—" He realized Luffy might not know. "Do you know who your dad is?"

He felt Luffy nod into his neck.

"Gramps told me."

"Yeah, so, it was me or both of us. Not even Gramps could fight all the marines."

Again, there was silence, and Ace waited for a reaction, _any_ reaction.

"I want to punch him."

"Who?"

"Gramps."

Ace chuckled. Not so much at Luffy's words, but at what else they told him. Luffy wasn't angry, not with him. He hugged him tighter.

"Just wait until he can't beat you to a pulp, okay?"

* * *

Marco approached the bathroom with a handful of clothes hanging from his arm. He hoped those two had had time to talk, because with all the mess in Impel Down, conversation hadn't been a possibility, and once the party got underway there wouldn't be many chances for it either.

Finding clothes for Ace had been easy enough, his own —with a belt to hold the pants up— would do for now, but Luffy had been another story. Marco had felt a little bit like a creep entering cabins and opening closets in search of something that would fit him. He wasn't exactly sure whose clothes he had taken finally, but he had left a note taped to the door of the closet promising the spending money for the next island would be doubled in exchange for borrowing it.

He stopped outside of the bathroom's door to ensure he wouldn't interrupt anything too personal, but as Luffy was talking about a restaurant where he had apparently met one of the members of his crew, Marco pushed the door open. Ace was already looking at the door, and Luffy turned when he heard it creak open.

"Are those for us?" Ace said.

"Yeah." He dropped the three outfits on a bench and looked at his reflection on the mirror —his shirt was ruined, and he had liked it.

"We can bathe now?" Luffy asked enthusiastically. Marco was about to correct him, saying they were going to shower, when he noticed the giant tub —that looked more like a small pool— in the middle of the room was already half filled. Luffy didn't wait for an answer before practically ripping his clothes off and jumping in —it was a good thing the tub wasn't too deep or full, or that might have been dangerous.

Ace gave Marco a slightly dubious look, as if he wasn't sure they should have filled it.

"Sorry, Luffy just couldn't resist." He snuck a glance at the tub, and Marco knew he was eager to go in as well. Marco guessed showers in Impel Down —if there _were_ showers and they didn't simply wash the prisoners with a hose whenever the stench grew too insufferable for the guards— were cold at best.

"Don't worry about it." The water was filtered from the sea. Marco had simply thought a shower would be faster, but he guessed there would be no problem if they took a little of extra time.

Marco decided they would take as much extra time as Ace wanted when he saw Ace's face upon entering the bathtub. His eyes widened, his pupils dilated and he actually groaned out loud as he dropped down on one of the benches that ran the inside of the border of the tub. He just sat there for two long minutes, marveling at the fact that he was in a bath of warm water, and only snapped out of it when Marco, too, entered the tub.

Then Ace moved, and began to try to swim backwards on the shallow water. It was clear he had known how to do it before, and was trying to get the memory back. Luffy raised his cupped hands over Ace's face and dumped water on him. Ace sputtered, then glared at his grinning brother and pushed him. Luffy's ass landed on the bottom of the pool and he didn't waste time in kicking up and soaking Ace further. Things developed into a childish squabble in which the brothers threw water at one another and ended up running around the tub with Ace chasing Luffy with a bucket full of water in his hands.

As an adult, Marco should do the responsible thing and stop them. Instead, he grabbed either of them by an ankle and pulled their flailing bodies back into the water. The bucket fell to the ground and spilled its contents on a pile of clean towels.

After that, the brothers teamed up against him.

* * *

It was a massacre. That had been the first thought to cross Sengoku's mind after they had finally reached Impel Down.

By then, there had been no pirate ships on sight. In fact, there had been no ships at all on sight, only debris floating on the water that made it clear what had happened to the marine ships stationed at the prison. There were bodies floating on the water as well, and there had even been a couple of Sea Kings swimming around the prison, snacking on them. Aokiji had frozen the sea monsters before they could do more than look at the new arrivals.

Sengoku had had to forbid Akainu to pursue the pirates, and the man hadn't been pleased at all at the order. But they couldn't go after them. Not only was it unlikely they would catch up to them —they had arrived too late to even know in which direction they had left— but they weren't in any condition to fight. Back in Marineford, with all the traps and being in their own territory, the result of the fight had been unclear already. If they had arrived on Impel Down while the pirates were here, maybe they would have been able to win, if they had managed to trap them in the prison, but on open sea, against a fleet like that, the chances of winning were minimal at best.

If they even caught up with them.

When they had entered the prison, Sengoku knew he had been right in his choice. Level one was practically deserted of prisoners —only a few remained, and all those cursed the Whitebeard Pirates in a way that revealed their hatred went past not having been freed— and there were dead guards everywhere.

"Search for survivors," was his order. He didn't expect there to be many.

They had found less dead guards in level two, but it held just as few prisoners as level one.

Level three, however, showed there had been a hard fight on it. There was one of the Demon Guards in a very lamentable state, and they had found Hannyabal barely alive. He looked like he had been beaten by a giant repeatedly. Or an absurdly strong commander, more likely. He had been taken to one of the ships for urgent medical treatment.

The stairs to level four had made them pause. Sengoku had seen one of the marines move away to throw up to the side. He couldn't blame him. There had been crushed bodies, hundreds of them, littering the steps. It had taken a long half hour to remove them, and not a single survivor had been found.

Now they were on level four, and a group had gone ahead to scout levels five and six. This level was the one with the most survivors, though not many prisoners remained —same as in the three previous levels. There were many unconscious guards moved to the sides and into rooms, in a way that suggested someone had used haoshoku haki on them.

Sengoku watched as a group of medics carefully lowered a shackled Magellan from one of the cells —they had refused to remove the kairoseki, because it would be too dangerous to handle him with the poison. He was barely alive, and his survival wasn't guaranteed.

He wasn't the only one they had found.

Shiliew had been in another cell, heavily wounded as well. Sengoku had ordered they patched him up there and sent him back to level six. He wouldn't allow a man as dangerous as him outside of this prison. He could understand why Magellan had let him out, a look around proved just how desperate the situation had been here, but that decision would cost him his position at the very least.

Then again, Magellan wasn't the only one who would lose his position after this. Sengoku was already composing his resignation letter. He doubted they would want him completely out of the marines, but after this disaster, he couldn't stay as their visible leader either. He wouldn't want to, even if he was allowed, not after such a terrible miscalculation.

"It looks like your grandson got out, after all," he told Garp, who was standing silently next to him.

Garp was silent, looking somberly at the scene just like Sengoku was doing. He may be an insensitive idiot sometimes, but he was no monster and Sengoku knew he was as affected by the scene here as he himself was.

They had lost, and the world wouldn't be the same after today. Maybe it had been a bet too risky to make.

* * *

By the time they left the tub, Marco was sure he would be yelled at for the mess the bathroom had turned into. But Ace had laughed —hard enough to need to clutch his stomach when Luffy somehow had managed to get his head stuck between two cupboards— and that alone made any scolding he might receive worth it.

Ace was staring at himself on the mirror, a disgustedly fascinated expression on his face. Marco knew that, aside from whatever reflection could be seen on the water back in the cell, this was the first time he saw himself in years, and he obviously didn't like what he saw. Shaking his head as if to clear it of whatever thoughts had been running through it, Ace transferred his gaze to the toothbrush Marco had handed him —Marco had raided the supplies storeroom when he had gone in search of clothes— and he didn't seem any less fascinated by it than by his appearance, though there was nothing that horrified him in the toothbrush. Luffy was energetically brushing his teeth and, as soon as Marco was done squeezing toothpaste on his own brush —he didn't care they were about to eat, he really needed this after a week stuck in that cell, and yellow teeth was something his powers didn't take care of— Ace practically jumped the tube and squeezed a little too much paste on his toothbrush before starting to brush his teeth frantically.

Luffy, unsurprisingly, was the first one to be done.

"Is the food ready?" he asked Marco.

"I don't know, but we're not there yet." Wherever 'there' was. Marco guessed they had decided on a meeting point with their allies.

Luffy had stopped listening after 'I don't know', it seemed, because he had thrown the towel around his waist aside and practically jumped into the shorts Marco had brought him.

"I'm hungry!" he exclaimed, throwing on the shirt. "I'll save you something good, Ace!"

And he was out the door, running up the corridor the way they had come.

Ace shook his head, a fond smile on his face.

"He hasn't changed at all," he commented before going back to brushing his teeth.

"At least there are no crocodiles to eat him here."

Ace almost choked on the toothpaste and Marco laughed, ignoring the glare aimed at him.

Marco finished first, deciding he probably wouldn't get his teeth back to their previous white state in one go and settling for the clean feeling in his mouth. He grabbed Ace by the wrist, stopping his motions, when he noticed a pink hue on the paste he spat into the sink.

"I think that's enough. You'll hurt yourself if you keep going."

"I'm not done," Ace argued, glaring at his reflection on the mirror. His teeth were an unhealthy yellow color, that was true, and it was a small miracle he hadn't lost any in seven years, but there was only so much he could do at once.

"It'll take some time, don't overdo it."

Ace sighed, still visibly annoyed, but let Marco take the toothbrush from his hand. Marco picked up Luffy's abandoned brush as well and, as there weren't any empty cups, he put the two in his.

"Hey, Marco." He noticed he was still holding Ace's brush and let go of it. Ace was still looking into the mirror. "What I said the other day… I still mean it, you know."

Marco stared at him. He didn't need to ask Ace to explain what he was talking about, he knew very well what conversation he meant. And Marco _had_ promised he would fuck him if he really wanted him to once they got out. He smiled.

"That's good to hear."

Ace turned to him, a determined look on his face, and grabbed Marco by the shoulders. Marco didn't move, though he knew what was going to happen, and let Ace initiate the kiss instead. It was forceful, hungry, clumsy and a little awkward, and it may well be one of the best kisses Marco had ever experienced.

Marco tangled his hands in Ace's now soft hair, and angled their heads in a way that would make it easier for his tongue to delve into Ace's mouth. Ace opened his mouth eagerly, and his tongue came out to meet Marco's. Marco tried to guide him, to help him match his own movements, and before he realized, it he had pushed Ace against the counter, and his hands were running over his torso, down his sides and to the edge of the towel. He trailed his fingers right above it and felt Ace shiver, he nipped at his bottom lip and pulled back to see Ace's reaction when he pinched his now hard nipples. Ace closed his eyes and bit his lower lip, hard.

"Don't hold back," Marco whispered into his ear, and kissed him right below the earlobe. "I want to hear you moan."

This time, when he pinched his nipples, Ace gasped, and that was an improvement.

Then Ace's hands abandoned his shoulders and trailed down his chest, tentative, exploring. Marco traced a path of kisses and soft bites down Ace's neck, encouraging him to continue, and soon could feel the tip of Ace's hard cock against him through the flimsy fabric of their towels. He wasn't indifferent himself, but he realized they couldn't take long, and he didn't want to take Ace here, like this, the first time.

A look into Ace's face, however, convinced him he couldn't just cut things short and leave him like this, either.

He kissed Ace again, and with his left hand made short work of the knots holding their towels around their waist. Marco broke the kiss right before pressing their bodies together, and smiled upon hearing the soft moan Ace let out, his head arching back, when their hard lengths brushed against each other.

"You like that?" Marco asked, and he moved forward to kiss the lower half of Ace's neck. Ace nodded. His hands had stopped, and now one of them was at Marco's hip, the other at the back of his head. Marco trailed a hand down up Ace's thigh, and stopped short of his erection. "Tell me, Ace, have you ever jerked off?"

Ace was blushing, but by no means did that mean he was shy.

"Yeah, a couple of times."

Marco moved his hand, and he had barely wrapped it around Ace's cock —Ace shivered— when another idea crossed his mind. He let go, which earned him an annoyed look.

"Hold onto the counter."

"What?" Confusion replaced annoyance on Ace's face.

"Just do it," Marco insisted, and Ace did.

Then Marco, not taking his gaze off Ace's face, dropped to his knees. Ace's eyes widened, and he could see the anticipation, even wonder, shining in them.

Marco held on to Ace by the hip with one hand, and traced Ace's length with the tip of the fingers of the other hand. Above, Ace gasped and his body tensed up. Marco ran his thumb over the slit and gathered the pre-cum leaking from it. He spread it over the entire cock before wrapping his hand around it. Ace moaned again, and in that moment it was clear he had really done this no more than a couple of times. He wouldn't last long, and with that thought in mind Marco leaned his head forward. He let the tip of his tongue trace the head of Ace's cock, and he received a loud groan this time.

He trailed his hand down to Ace's balls, and brushed them gently with his fingers, but decided to leave them alone for now, unsure of how Ace would react and not wanting to ruin the moment.

Marco moved forward, taking Ace's entire length in one moment and making Ace release a moan so loud it might have been a shout in response. If he had been able to, Marco would have smirked, but with his mouth, full that was just not possible. Instead, he sucked around Ace's length, let the tip slid a little down his throat —Ace's hips bucked under the hand still holding them, and he would no doubt he thrusting if Marco let him go— and then moved back, slowly releasing him as his tongue traced patterns over the veins of Ace's cock, his free hand coming back to apply pressure on the released area.

As he had predicted, Ace didn't last long. The second time Marco took him in deep, Ace grabbed him by the back of the head with both hands, cursing incoherently, and Marco had sucked on him only once when he came, releasing thick spurts of warm come into his mouth, gasping out Marco's name as he did. He swallowed around him, and licked him clean once he was done, releasing Ace's now soft cock before looking up.

His cheeks flushed, Ace was panting heavily and looked down at him in sheer fascination.

"You…" he started to say, but didn't seem to know how to finish his sentence.

Marco stood up and grinned smugly at him.

"I take it you liked that."

"_Liked_?!" Ace exclaimed, and Marco was sure he was going to say he had more than liked it when Ace cut himself off, eyes looking down. "What about you?"

Marco looked down, too. Yes, he hadn't come. He had been focused on Ace, and had neglected himself. Now that Ace had pointed it out, he noticed he really needed to fix it.

Ace moved forward and reached out with his hand. Marco stopped him by the wrist.

"You don't have to," he said, looking him in the eyes. Ace scoffed.

"No, of course not. I _want_ to. I don't know how to—" here Ace hesitated, "suck you off, but I can do this."

Marco looked around, eyes settling on one of the shower stalls.

"I'll need a shower after this, then," he said. Ace grinned, agreeing, and let himself be dragged into the stall. It was better not to dirty the floor if they could avoid it.

* * *

As it turned out, there was some food ready, but no one was allowed near it. Luffy had been bodily dragged away from the kitchen —it seemed he had found it through the smell, a technique Ace himself remembered using as a child— by Izo, and he was now sulking, sitting on the figurehead. Ace went to sit with him.

"It won't be too long, don't worry," he told him.

"I'm hungry," Luffy whined. "Aren't you hungry?"

Ace pondered that question, and the best way to explain.

"I want to eat," he said, slowly, "but I'm not hungry. I'm too used to not eating for long to be hungry now, really."

Luffy turned to look at him, a serious and pissed off expression on his face that really didn't fit him.

"I should've hit those guards harder."

Ace grinned.

"I hit them harder than you, don't worry."

"You didn't," Luffy argued. "I'm stronger."

"Ha! Sure."

They glared at each other, but then grinned and snickered. Ace had missed Luffy too much to even bicker with him as they used to, and Luffy seemed to feel the same.

"Hey, Luffy," Ace said, turning to stare at the sea. They were still on the Calm Belt, and Ace was curious to know how the ships could move with no wind. The sails were even folded.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me about your crew."

* * *

Marco was sitting in one of the ship's crow nests. He wasn't on watch duty or anything, he wouldn't even if it was his turn, after being in Impel Down, but he had really missed here. There wasn't really any wind, the only moving air he felt was a result of the dials moving the ship forward, but even then, as faint as it was, it was a great sensation.

Vista climbed up and leaned on the railing next to him.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Marco answered.

Vista raised an eyebrow.

"Just fine? I saw Ace. He didn't have those hickeys before."

Marco grinned, but didn't say anything. Vista shook his head.

"What's his deal with Strawhat, anyway? We know he was there for Ace, but not why."

"They're brothers," Marco told him, and Vista just nodded. That explained everything for them.

From here, Marco could see Luffy and Ace sitting on the figurehead. Luffy was talking animatedly, gesturing wildly with his hands and making fighting motions sometimes. Ace's expression was changing from incredulous, to grinning, to plain disbelieving and back to grinning.

"How long had he been there? It looks like they hadn't seen each other in a long time," Vista asked after a while, but Marco shook his head.

"It's not my story to tell."

* * *

It took a few hours to reach their destination, and it was almost the hour originally scheduled for the executions when they arrived. The irony of it wasn't lost on Izo. They had settled to meet with their allies on a small uninhabited island in the opposite direction from Impel Down than where Marineford was.

As soon as they were there, Izo sent people to see if they could get some food from the marine ships —they had a lot more people to feed now, and might fall short with what provisions they had brought for the party— and wasn't really surprised to discover the former prisoners had raided the food storages in those ships. There was still a lot of food left, though, and they could add some to what they were cooking for the party. Soon, their allies would start to arrive, but it was clear by the mood that they wouldn't wait for them to start.

Strawhat was back to trying to enter the kitchen, and he was hard to hold back.

Marco approached Izo.

"I've just thought of something," he said. Izo looked inquiringly at him. "Has anyone talked to Squard?" He directed a pointed look in Ace's direction, and Izo understood what he meant.

"He didn't like it much when we told him we were planning to free Roger's son. He decided to stay in the New World and keep an eye on our territories while we came here."

It was for the best, Izo thought. Squard held a very serious grudge against Roger and, though no one could blame him for it, holding it against his son was an entirely different story. It would take the man some time to get used to the idea of having Ace around —at this point Izo didn't doubt he would join the crew— and it was better if they weren't close together until Squard had accepted it.

* * *

Luffy jumped at the food as soon as the first tray of meat was placed on one of the many tables now littering the beach they were at. No one reacted to his actions, which was strange because Ace remembered people had always been horrified at their table manners whenever he had gone with Sabo and Luffy to the city.

Soon the tables were covered in food of all kinds, and everybody was eating and talking.

Ace hesitated for a moment before stepping next to Marco. He stayed away from where Luffy was, as many people seemed to be doing as well, because no plate around him was safe from his all-reaching rubber hands, and he ate at a dizzying speed.

Ace looked down at the table and tried to decide what he wanted to eat first. His stomach was now growling, awakened by all the amazing scents assaulting his nose. They were too many and too mixed together for him to be able to tell which scent belonged to which dish, and everything on the table looked very appealing. There were different kinds of meats, what he thought —at least by their shape— must be fish, vegetables, breads, potatoes, and most plates had a different-looking sauce. There were, as well, many drinks placed amongst the food.

It had been too long since Ace had last seen real food to be able to discern what most dishes were past the barest notion of meat or vegetables, and in some cases he wasn't even sure if something was meat or fish.

He settled for a random plate of what he was reasonably sure was meat, because he remembered he had liked that best. He grabbed a clean fork off the table, stabbed a chunk of meat and brought it to his mouth.

He froze.

It was... like nothing he could truly remember or have imagined. He didn't have the words to describe it, but it was all flavor and sensation invading his mouth, and it had nothing to do with the bleak prison drivel that he was used to.

It wasn't until Marco rested a hand on his shoulder and asked him if he was alright that Ace realized he had started to cry.

Then Luffy's hand was there, holding a plate before him in offer, and Ace ate everything on it. He ate everything on the next plate he was given, too, and kept eating and crying because this was the best day of his life and he couldn't believe he had forgotten just how wonderful food was.

* * *

Marco was sitting on the sand, away from the thick of the party. Ace was curled next to him, head resting on Marco's lap and arms wrapped pitifully across his stomach. Marco was running a hand through his hair.

He had known it wasn't a good idea for Ace to eat too much so soon, but after seeing his reaction to the first bite, he hadn't had the heart to tell him to slow down, and now Ace's stomach was protesting violently to the overload of food. At least he hadn't thrown up.

Marco had put a bottle of water next to him, ready in case Ace grew thirsty, because Ace wasn't getting anywhere near booze in his current condition. He had commandeered a bottle of everything alcoholic for himself, though, and had already gone through the rum and two different kinds of beer. Being unable to get drunk had its advantages.

And he had missed this.

It was already dark, and the party was still going strong. By now, there were more people drunk than sober, but everybody was in such a good mood that not a single fight had broken out. Ivankov was demonstrating her powers —she was in a feminine mood, and thus had turned into a woman for the time being— and turning whoever asked into the opposite gender, or modifying body parts. Izo, Marco remembered with an amused grin, had been terribly offended when Ivankov had offered to turn him into a woman.

Farther away, Luffy was leading a massive dance, and Marco wasn't sure if he should be more worried or amused by it. Luffy, an arm around Buggy's shoulders and another around Bon-chan's, was moving without the slightest resemblance of coordination while they all singed Bink's Sake, and he had chopsticks pushed into his nose and mouth. Many people, and some of them Marco knew would regret it once they sobered up, had copied him.

"That looks fun," Ace said, and Marco looked down at him.

"You'd like to join?"

"Yeah," Ace sighed out, because he was still mostly unable to move.

Marco patted him on the head. There would be another chance for that, there was no way this would be the only party they threw while Luffy was with them.

"Even the chopsticks?" he asked, and Ace chuckled.

"Even the chopsticks."

Right then, someone ran up to Pops with a pair of giant chopsticks. He laughed and accepted them. Marco shook his head.

* * *

Ace felt disoriented when he woke up. He was in a dark room, resting on a soft surface and with an also soft fabric covering him. _A bed_. It was a good thing he hadn't fallen asleep on the floor, or he might have feared that it had all been a dream. But he remembered. It had been late into the night when Marco had convinced him to go to the infirmary and maybe get something to settle his stomach. The nurses there had given him an epic scolding for being so irresponsible and eating so much —even Gramps had trouble reaching that level of angry disappointment— and, after giving him the medicine, insisted he should stay the night at the very least. They made no secret that they were worried about his health after his stay at Impel Down. Ace wasn't sure whether he felt more grateful or annoyed about it.

Marco had said he would stay with him, and, sure enough, Ace could make out his silhouette sitting on a chair next to the bed. By his stance, Ace could see he was awake.

"Have you slept at all?" he asked in a whisper, not wanting to raise his voice in case there was some patient nearby —Curiel was in a single room, not in the main area of the infirmary with all the other beds where Ace was, so he wouldn't hear him, but there might be other patients.

"A little. I'm not really tired."

"What time is it?" He had always been good at guessing the time, but he felt a little disoriented right now. He blamed the meds. Or maybe the bed; Ace had always been capable of guessing how long he had slept based on how sore his neck felt afterwards, but the mattress and pillow were just too comfortable for that.

A blue flame appeared in the darkness, and Ace sat up suddenly, startled. Marco smirked at him, his lit hand giving a creepy appearance to his face. Ace had forgotten Marco could do that.

The light was enough for him to be able to read the clock Marco pointed to on the wall. It was around four twenty five, which meant Ace hadn't really slept more than three or four hours. He felt much more rested than that.

"Oh. Is the party still going?"

"Yes, and it will probably continue until breakfast."

Ace's stomach twisted at the mention of breakfast. He grimaced.

"I'm not sure my stomach wants me to eat."

"You should. Something light, at the very least." Ace knew he would. His stomach may be complaining, and would perhaps give him some trouble afterwards, but this was _food_ they were talking about. "Also, Luffy is here too, now."

"What?!" The only reason Ace didn't yell was his conditioning in level six to avoid doing it.

"He's fine," Marco assured him. "It seems the energy from Ivankov's adrenaline boost has worn off, and now he has to sleep off the aftereffects. He'll be up again in a day or two." Then Marco pointed to Ace's other side, and when he turned he could see, thanks to the blue flames still present, his brother sleeping on the bed next to him.

"He really overdid himself, didn't he?"

"Of course he did. Wouldn't you have done the same?"

Ace nodded, because it was true. That didn't change the fact that Luffy was an idiot for charging into Impel Down alone.

"How are you feeling?"

Ace paused before answering, realizing he hadn't even stopped to think about it. His stomach still hurt, of course, but he no longer felt like he would have to turn over at any moment and throw everything up.

"Much better," he admitted. "Next time I do something so stupid, stop me."

Marco chuckled.

"I'll try, but you're too stubborn."

Ace wanted to glare at him, but ended up with a half smile. He couldn't deny the truth in that statement.

"Try to sleep," Marco told him, and stood up. "I'm going to make sure no one has died from alcohol poisoning."

Ace snorted. He had paid enough attention to the party to know that was a real possibility. Marco would have been the one to die of that if it wasn't for his powers, seeing how much he had drunk.

The fire went out, and then there was a mouth against his, and Ace held onto Marco's shoulders as he tried to kiss him back. It was hard, half-asleep as he was, to follow his movements.

When Marco pulled back, Ace leaned back on the bed and brought the covers up even though it wasn't really cold —they were soft and nice.

"Hey, Marco," he called before Marco reached the door.

"Yes?" His silhouette moved, signaling he had turned to look at him.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For being right."

* * *

When Marco made it back to the beach, he noticed it seemed emptier than when he had left almost four hours ago with Ace. There were still a lot of people, but it seemed easier than before to walk through the crowd of drunken pirates.

"Aren't we missing people here?" he asked Pops, who thankfully had finally put those damn chopsticks aside. Marco might not care about knowing about Whitebeard's sex life like most sons did about their parents, but he had discovered that, even as pirates, there were some things one didn't want to _ever_ see his father doing.

"The prisoners just left."

"Oh?" Marco raised his eyebrows, and jumped on a rock to sit closer to eye level with Whitebeard, who shrugged.

"It seemed they wanted to meet with the crew of that red nosed kid from Roger's crew."

"Oh, yeah. He had the idea to free them first, didn't he?" Marco wondered if that meant they were joining Buggy's crew. That would be interesting, really, seeing that guy —who really _wasn't_ strong at all— with so many subordinates more powerful than him. But many people from the old days had recognized him as the kid from Roger's crew who used to go around with Red Haired Shanks, and that had left many of the prisoners awestruck. He had seen it all day, and the awe with which the former prisoners looked at Buggy had only increased as the party advanced and more people remembered where they had seen his face before. If they really joined him, Marco thought, it would be amusing at the very least.

"How's Ace?" Whitebeard asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Doing better."

Pops chuckled.

"Who would've guessed that even a D. could eat too much. This is a strange world."

Marco smiled. Strange indeed.

* * *

The next day, Ace allowed himself to be convinced to stay in the infirmary with only minimal fuss. As a child, he would have refused to stay here any longer than strictly necessary, deeming it a waste of time, but now he was so comfortable —and in a real _bed_— that he was more than willing to stay. He wouldn't be able to stand it for more than a couple of days, he knew himself and had no doubt he would grow restless soon, but for now he wanted to enjoy the luxury. The fact that Luffy was here was only another reason for him to stay. With the light of day, he could see Bon-chan was passed out in the bed next to Luffy's, and it was then that Ace remembered he had been given a hormone boost as well.

Early in the morning, many people drifted into the infirmary. They were mostly dragging their feet and their skins looked any variety of shades between white and green. Most of them were sent out with a scolding and nothing to alleviate their hangovers, but the ones that were worse off either received a pill or two or were ordered to stay.

Ace got many looks from the visitors, and was sure, had they been feeling any better, some of them would have talked to him. As things were, Ace only had a conversation with the nurse that checked on him —her name was Emma— and later with Marco, who appeared at mid-morning to bring him some breakfast on a tray. Aside from the food, there was a folded newspaper on it as well. Ace was amused to see the nurses check what Marco had brought before letting him get it anywhere near Ace.

"You can't eat meat or dairy," Marco told him as he sat down on the same chair from last night, tray balanced on his lap.

"I'm not complaining. What's in there?"

Marco handed him first a glass of orange juice —it was easy to guess that was what it was, given the color— and Ace decided not to risk it this time and drink slowly. He was halfway through the glass when a hand appeared out of nowhere and stole the bowl of cereal on the tray. Ace turned, surprised that Luffy was awake so soon, and was left speechless when he saw that no, Luffy wasn't awake, but he was somehow wolfing down the cereal with complete ease.

In the stunned silence that followed, Luffy stole the apple and ate it as well.

"I can't believe this…" Ace muttered.

"Your brother has some strange skills," Marco commented, a mix between amusement and bafflement.

Ace's glass was stolen from his hand.

Behind them, Emma said something about calling for more food, and left the room in a dazed state.

"I need to learn how to do that," Ace decided, watching how Luffy drank the remaining juice without spilling any on himself.

* * *

Ace had finally managed to eat breakfast —it had been necessary a full cart of food to distract the sleeping Luffy so he could eat— and Marco decided it was time to show him what had appeared on the newspaper that morning.

"You made the cover page again," he said, handing over the paper.

He saw Ace open the paper and look at the article that covered the entire page. His eyebrows soon went up. It wasn't strange, half of the cover was taken by an image printed from the den den mushi surveillance records of Impel Down, where they all appeared on their way up the stairs from level three to level one after all the fighting had been over.

"I wasn't expecting them to publish this," Ace commented.

"They had no choice. Sabaody was full of reporters waiting for a battle and two executions that never happened. And, besides, there's no way the world won't notice so many supposedly imprisoned criminals now roaming free. I have no plans of keeping a low profile, I can tell you that much."

Ace smiled.

"I don't, either. Mind giving me the summary? This thing is long." The text on the cover was only the introduction; the article took over half of the newspaper.

"Basically, they say the truth about the crew assaulting Impel Down, but have changed some things. Somewhere around the second or third page it says Luffy came with them, and they've revealed your relationship with him to explain it —I guess it was too embarrassing to admit a rookie slipped through all their defenses, so they went with the story of the little brother tagging along in a bigger attack. They don't mention Shiliew —no surprise there— and there is a very detailed account of how many guards died and were injured, I guess to gain sympathy from the people using the human factor. They have also altered the story to say that all our allies took part in the attack, as if our crew alone wasn't enough to take on that place, probably also for sympathy: losing against one crew, even us, isn't the same as losing against an army of pirates. They don't say much more, they've promised a list of escaped prisoners as soon as they've cleared the place. Everything else is pro-World Government propaganda and comments on how evil we are. You are a monster, it seems," Marco added, raising his eyebrows.

Ace scoffed.

"Of course. I'm surprised they haven't given me a bounty."

"Oh, they will, as soon as they get everything sorted out. I wouldn't be surprised if your brother's bounty is raised, too, after this stunt."

"What about yours?"

Marco shrugged.

"I wouldn't mind a raise, but I don't know, mine is very high already."

* * *

Throughout the day, now that it had become clear the marines weren't going to attack them —they had intercepted enough conversations to know many were returning to their posts, as chaos had broken out after the news of the attack on Impel Down— their allies started to head back to the New World. They left in groups, to discourage any attack from the marines on the way, and soon, the only ones left on the island were the Whitebeard Pirates and Ivankov's people. Ivankov had decided to wait until Bon-chan woke up, because apparently he now was one of his 'candies' and wanted to offer him the chance to accompany them to Kamabakka Kingdom.

The Whitebeard Pirates set sail, not wanting to risk being ambushed there if the marines changed their minds, but didn't have any set course yet.

It was fine, they weren't in any hurry. After this incident, things had settled in the New World somewhat, and no one had tried anything in their territories yet.

They had decided, and it hadn't taken much time, that they would wait for Luffy to wake up and take him wherever he needed to be. It was clear he must have had some destination in mind before he decided to sneak into Impel Down.

* * *

By the time Luffy woke up, it was early the next morning, and Ace was already awake. He had spent most of the previous day asleep and his stomach didn't hurt anymore. The only reason he was still here was because he had decided to wait for Luffy to wake up.

"Morning," Ace greeted him when Luffy rose groggily to a sitting position.

Luffy grinned, completely awake all of a sudden, and the next thing he knew, Ace was lying on his back on the bed with an armful of happy Luffy squeezing the air out of him. Ace was still too happy at having been able to see his brother again to complain about the clingy behavior.

"I'm hungry," Luffy said after a while, and Ace raised an eyebrow.

"You spent all of yesterday eating." They sat up. "How can you even eat while asleep, anyway?"

Luffy shrugged.

"I had to learn after the mess at Enies Lobby. I spent three days asleep then."

_Alright..._ Ace thought, shaking his head. He didn't even want to think what sort of fight it had been to make Luffy sleep for three days straight afterwards.

"Let's go eat, then," Ace said, answering Luffy's earlier demand.

Luffy jumped to his feet with a wide grin on his face. Ace stood up more sedately.

Yesterday afternoon, when Ace had woken up to go to the bathroom —because he could go there whenever he felt like it, now, and that would take some getting used to— there had been clothes waiting for the two of them on a chair, so they went to change out of the pajamas they had been wearing first.

"Hey, Ace."

"Yeah?"

"Want to join my crew?"

Ace paused. He hadn't even thought about what he was going to do now that he was out, but, he realized, it wasn't because he had overlooked it, it was because he had already known the answer, even back in his cell in Impel Down.

He grinned.

"Are you kidding? I'd die of embarrassment if my little brother was my captain."

"Oi!" Luffy complained, but he didn't sound particularly offended.

"Besides," Ace continued, "there's another crew I'd like to join."

Luffy grinned.

"Yeah, I'd guessed." Luffy pointed at Ace's neck with a chuckle, and Ace covered the already fading marks there with slight embarrassment. He sometimes forgot his brother wasn't always as oblivious as he looked. "But I wanted to ask."

* * *

It had taken the entirety of breakfast for Ace to make up his mind, but finally he had left Luffy with a group of curious pirates who wanted to know how he had managed to get into Impel Down. Ace had already confirmed that Marco's theory had been right —though he noticed Luffy didn't mention Hancock and went straight to talking about the weird beast guards, which seemed an interesting enough story for his audience— and he didn't have any interest in learning anything more that might give him a heart attack.

Luffy was alive, and that was all that mattered.

He found Whitebeard sitting in a giant chair on deck, talking to Marco, who was sitting on his knee as if he was a little kid instead of a dangerous criminal with a shitload of zeros on his bounty poster. He faltered, and was about to turn around and come back later —they might be catching up after Marco's stint in prison, and he didn't want to interrupt that— when they spotted him.

"Is your brother awake?" Whitebeard asked, and Ace realized this was the first time they had talked in person. He wasn't about to be cowed by that.

"Yeah," he answered, and decided to approach them. If they were going to talk, he saw no reason to stay away.

"Are you joining the crew?" Whitebeard sounded strangely unimposing then, no trace of a demand in his voice or even certainty —and he had to be pretty sure Ace would join, everybody else acted as if he already had— and Ace found that reassuring. His shoulders, which he hadn't noticed were tense, relaxed.

"Yeah," he said, and looked sideways at Marco. "I've heard you're a pretty decent father."

Ace had long since learned that one could find an amazing family outside of their blood ties. And he hadn't even noticed how much Marco's words their last night in prison had convinced him to try it out for himself with the crew until now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Part VI**

The Whitebeard Pirates had an entire wall of the mess hall of the Moby Dick covered with the wanted posters of every member of the crew and ally who had a price on their head. Ace had seen it the first time he had entered the room, and later that day had spent a good half an hour looking at the bounties. Some were stuck in a pile, one on top of another, and those piles contained the different upgrades of a person's bounty. Ace hadn't been surprised to discover than the ones with the most pages were Marco's and Whitebeard's.

Aside from that, when Vista had overheard Luffy regretting he couldn't show Ace his crew, Ace had learned that they also kept a sort of archive with every wanted poster, of anyone and from anywhere, that came out.

Right now, Ace was looking at the picture of an incredibly cute yet unidentifiable animal —Luffy claimed it was a reindeer— who apparently was the Strawhat Pirates' doctor.

* * *

"Hey, old man!" Everybody in hearing range turned at this to see Luffy standing in front of Whitebeard's chair. Marco grinned, amused, at the reactions this earned. It seemed his brothers and sisters still hadn't understood that Luffy just didn't respect someone based on their reputation, much less fear them. Marco wasn't sure Luffy even knew how to express what most people would call 'proper' respect, even when it came to someone he truly respected.

"What do you want?" Pops asked, looking at him over the edge of his bottle of sake. He seemed as amused as Marco was.

"Can you take me to Sabaody?"

Yesterday, when Bon-chan had finally woke up, Ivankov and his people had taken the last remaining marine battleship and had left after a very loud and tearful goodbye, leaving Luffy as the only non-Whitebeard Pirate left with the crew.

"Ask Marco, he's in charge of the route," Pops said, as if they hadn't already decided they would drop him off wherever he wanted to go, and as if they didn't have to go to Sabaody to get their ships coated either way.

Luffy turned big and hopeful eyes on Marco. He opened his mouth.

"We'll go there," Marco said before he could ask, and threw an annoyed look at an amused Pops.

Luffy grinned.

"Why do you want to go there, anyway?" Izo, who was sitting in a chair before a folding table doing his nails, asked.

"I agreed to meet my friends there. They're probably waiting for me already."

"Wait, so it was true?" Vista asked, looking at Luffy. More people turned to him, and there were more than one set of widened eyes. Marco had the feeling he was missing something, and he didn't like that.

"What was true?" he asked.

"Oh, right, you'd already left. The day after Ace's execution was announced, there was a story in the newspaper saying how this crazy guy," Vista pointed at Luffy, "had punched a Tenryuubito."

"That guy hurt Hatchan!" Luffy argued, as if that explained it all. For them, it did, but for almost everybody else in the world it would be a stupid as hell reason and a plainly suicidal move.

That Luffy saw defending a friend as reason enough for punching a Tenryuubito had many people around them nodding in approval.

"The article also said your crew had been defeated," Vista continued. "I'm guessing that's not exactly true."

A shadow crossed Luffy's face, and it was by far the most serious expression Marco had seen on him.

"We lost, but then this bear guy sent us all flying away, and the marines didn't catch us."

"Bear guy?" Izo asked.

"Yeah," Luffy nodded. "He was a Shichibukai."

"_Another _Shichibukai?" Ace asked, in an incredulous voice that made Marco think Crocodile wasn't the only other Shichibukai Ace was thinking about that Luffy had fought. Maybe he should ask about it.

"Kuma?" Vista asked. "I've heard some stories about that guy's powers."

* * *

It hadn't been even two hours since they had decided to head for Sabaody when they spotted the boat heading for them. The occupant of the boat was identified soon by the senior members of the crew, which created a bit of a stir in the crew —if, by stir, one understood panicked younger members and misunderstandings that a fight was about to occur.

Whitebeard had to yell for everybody to just shut the fuck up, which attracted the attention of those who hadn't already caught on to the nervousness. Mainly, the two brothers that had been once more talking on the ship's figurehead.

"What's going on?" Ace asked, approaching Whitebeard's seat with Luffy in tow.

"Silvers Rayleigh is heading our way," Jozu told them.

"The Dark King?" Ace asked, eyes widening.

"Old man Rayleigh?!" Luffy asked at the same time, a wide grin taking up his face.

Ace turned to him.

"You know him?"

"Yeah! He helped us with the marines, and is coating the Sunny." Luffy searched in his pockets and took out a vivre card. "He gave us this, too."

Marco, who had gone to wait by the railing as soon as they had spotted him, pulled up the rope they had thrown to help Rayleigh up, and he climbed on board the ship.

"I don't need help, you know," Rayleigh told Marco lightly.

"Oh? And here I thought old age would have affected you."

"Hey, old man!" Luffy greeted happily, earning himself more astonished looks that he ignored as easily as the previous ones.

"Ah, Luffy-kun, it's good to see you again," Rayleigh grinned. "Whitebeard," he nodded to the captain.

"Rayleigh. It's been a long time. You wanna fight or something?"

"Nah. Maybe later. Actually, I wanted to talk to Luffy-kun."

* * *

Silence had fallen after Rayleigh had explained his reasoning. He was right, anyone with experience fighting in the New World could tell as much. Luffy was strong, and he would be able to survive in the New World, but he was nowhere strong enough to go up against the most powerful people there, and that was precisely the sort of people he would have to go up against if he really wanted a chance at becoming the Pirate King.

"What do you propose?" Marco asked, because Luffy still looked mostly pensive. "He will have to warn his crew somehow if they are going to take a break." Rayleigh had told them that, by the time he had left Sabaody a couple of days ago —his vivre card was with Shakky now— none of Luffy's crewmembers had returned yet.

Rayleigh smiled.

"Luffy-kun has earned a lot of attention after appearing with you lot at Impel Down," the way he said it made it clear he knew there was more to the story, "and Sabaody is still crawling with reporters waiting for any news on it. After what happened at Grove 1," here he looked at Luffy, "that auction house is closed, but the Tenryuubito are back with their shopping trips to Sabaody."

"What are you suggesting?" Ace asked suspiciously. He had made a point not to talk directly to Rayleigh since he had arrived, but it seemed that, seeing how seriously Luffy was taking this, Ace had decided to overlook any suspicion he might be feeling towards Rayleigh for his relationship with Roger.

Rayleigh grinned and turned to Luffy.

"What do you say about punching some more Tenryuubito?"

* * *

"I can't believe Luffy has agreed to this," Ace muttered later that day, but in a way that made it clear he _could_ believe it. He was simply annoyed, Marco was sure, because everybody had agreed that it wouldn't be a good idea for Ace to accompany Luffy in this. The objective was to draw the reporters' attention to Luffy; Rayleigh's presence with him would distract them enough, but if Ace was there he would probably attract all their attention.

After some talking, Pops had decided they would help —Marco knew he had decided it the moment Rayleigh had showed up, but had announced it to ensure nobody had any doubts about it. They would go to Sabaody and wait some distance away from the archipelago while Luffy and Rayleigh headed there with the latter's boat. According to Rayleigh, the Tenryuubito visited the place very often, and it wouldn't be long —maybe a week at most— before one or two showed up.

Luffy had now a temporary henna tattoo on his right arm that showed a scratched out 3D, followed by a 2Y, a message for his crew. Luffy would punch a Tenryuubito with that arm when there were some reporters around. No reporter who valued themselves would resist taking a picture of someone crazy enough to attack a Tenryuubito, much less if that said someone was accompanied by the Dark King himself. The government, they all agreed, would jump at the chance of publishing any news that would distract the population from the whole fiasco at Impel Down —which still occupied a good part of the newspapers— and they were counting on it.

There were even some bets around the crew —and outside of the crew, because Rayleigh had joined in— trying to guess what sort of reason the reporters would come up with for Luffy's attack —the most common option was a statement the sort of 'we haven't been defeated' regarding his crew.

Once the attack was over, Luffy and Rayleigh would take the boat again and head for the Moby Dick, and from there they would go to an island next to Amazon Lily that Rayleigh thought would be a good place to train. Luffy had said he wanted to stop at Amazon Lily to thank Hancock for all her help, and most of the crew had supported the idea, though for much less innocent reasons —nobody had even thought of asking _what_ Luffy had to thank Hancock for, too busy fantasizing about the infamous Isle of Women. Marco had been forced to agree to go there, but under the condition that _no one_ was to set foot on the island without express permission from the empress herself. They didn't need any trouble.

Right now, Luffy and Rayleigh had just left, and Marco and Ace —along with many others— were watching as the boat grew smaller on the horizon. Luffy was still waving wildly. A lot of people were still waving back at him, too.

"I'm going to be worried sick until he comes back," Ace said.

"He'll be fine," Marco assured him. "I know you don't like Rayleigh much, but he's strong."

"Yeah, I know, but still…" Ace trailed off. He didn't have to say it, Marco understood. As the unofficial older brother of the Whitebeard Pirates, he knew just fine what it felt to worry constantly about reckless little brothers.

"If you want to forget about it for a while," Marco started, cautiously because he wasn't sure how Ace would respond in the current circumstances, "I seem to remember I owe you something."

Ace turned to him, a surprised expression on his face. He grinned.

"I was starting to think you'd forgotten."

* * *

This was the first time Ace was in Marco's cabin. It was not how he had expected it to be. Maybe it was because of Marco's usually calm demeanor, or perhaps it was his position of authority, but Ace had expected order: a neatly organized desk, a bookcase with some books and trinkets and the bed made. There was a desk, but it was littered with scattered papers, pens and pencils —there might even be an inkwell thrown in somewhere— and the bookcase held books, papers and small boxes stacked on the shelves, and many of the books weren't even in a vertical position or a straight pile. The bed was unmade, the sheets thrown to the side and fallen halfway to the floor, and there were some clothes thrown over the back of the chair.

The place felt lived in and comfy, and Ace decided he liked it.

"Are you still sure about this?" Marco asked from behind him, where he still stood next to the now closed door.

Ace rolled his eyes and turned around.

"Are you _seriously _asking? Man, you're a pirate, aren't you supposed to just take whatever you want?"

Marco's lips quirked into a half smile.

"True, how inconsiderate of me to ask. It won't happen again."

"Good." Ace nodded solemnly, or would have if his lips hadn't been caught mid-nod in a hungry kiss.

Oh, well, he didn't mind. He was getting better at this. He gave as good as he got.

Marco's hands on his shoulders started to guide him backwards towards the bed, but Ace had no intention of falling there while still dressed. He pushed Marco's shirt off his shoulders, and, open as it was, it slid down easily. Marco let go of him to allow the garment to fall and, having caught on, he did the same to the shirt Ace was wearing.

Before Ace could reach for Marco's lower body he heard a thump, and when his hands found Marco's waistband, there were no sash or belt in the way.

Marco broke the kiss and leaned down to trace his mouth over Ace's neck, lips, tongue and the occasional brush of teeth making him gasp and sigh.

He hadn't noticed his hand had stopped halfway through unzipping Marco's pants until his own slipped from his hips and fell to the floor. He hadn't even realized his belt was gone.

Determined not to stay as a passive party here, he made quick work of Marco's pants and took his sizable erection in one hand. Marco was fully erect, but so was Ace. In fact, this was the fastest he could remember ever getting hard.

"Can we move to the bed now?" Marco asked against his shoulder, sounding slightly amused. Annoyed, Ace squeezed his cock in a way that made Marco groan.

"Don't mock me."

Marco straightened and looked him right in the eye.

"I never would." He said it with such earnestness that Ace had to kiss him. It was that —continuing with what they were doing— or having a deep conversation. He wasn't ready for another one of those so soon. Besides, he really wanted to do this.

This time he let himself be walked backwards to the bed, and once he was on it he kicked his boots off and scooted further on the mattress, so his whole body was on it, and Marco moved to kneel between his parted legs. Ace absentmindedly noticed Marco was barefoot, and thought it must have required a great deal of skill to kick those sandals off.

He wasn't expecting Marco to trap one of his nipples with his mouth. He gasped when Marco sucked on it, because it was a more sensitive area than Ace would have believed. He wondered what other parts of his body were more sensitive than he thought, and he wanted Marco to explore his body to find them. But not now. Ace knew himself, he had always —when the need had been too strong to resist— masturbated as quickly and silently as possible. Marco had told him the other day that he wanted to hear him moan, and Ace could do that, but —as had been proved the other day as well— he knew he wouldn't last long. Maybe with time.

He stopped Marco before he could start kissing a trail down his chest.

"Oh, come on," he complained, using his best petulant voice, "get on with it."

The way Marco looked at him told Ace he could see right through his façade, but he nodded and sat up all the same.

Marco reached for the nightstand's top drawer, and Ace wondered for half a second what he was doing before he remembered a common aspect he had heard about in most consensual relationships between two guys: lube. That thought reminded him of something else, the position he had heard so often about and that seemed to be a favorite. He moved to turn around and get on all fours, but Marco stopped him with a hand on his hip before he could so much as twist around.

"No. Stay as you are." Ace tilted his head in confusion. "I want to see your face." Ace could understand that. He remembered Marco's face when he had come in Ace's hand a couple of days ago in the shower and decided that he wanted to be able to see Marco, too.

Now holding a small bottle in his left hand, Marco settled back between Ace's parted legs. He left the bottle on the sheets and hooked both hands on the underside of Ace's knees, making him part his legs a bit more and bend his knees further, leaving his ass more exposed. Ace shivered, and wondered when he had come to trust Marco so much that he didn't mind being in such a vulnerable position before him.

"Now, I know you probably won't listen," Marco said, taking the bottle and pouring a small amount of its contents on his hand. He spread the translucent substance over three fingers, "but if it hurts too much or you want to stop for any reason, tell me and I'll stop."

Ace scoffed. He had been to Impel Down, he may not have been regularly tortured like other prisoners —he refused to think about the reason the guards hadn't dared to touch him in this situation— but he had been there and he knew _pain_. A little sting in the ass was nothing in comparison.

Marco shook his head and leaned forward, looking down between Ace's parted legs. Ace didn't have much time to think how strange it was to have his ass regarded with such rapt attention before he felt the tip of a finger press against his hole. Then it pushed slowly in, through the tight ring of muscles, and Ace's body tensed up involuntarily. This was something he had never dared to try on himself, no matter how curious he might have been, and the finger fit in much more snuggly than he had expected it would. Nevertheless, it didn't hurt, and Ace forced his body to relax.

Marco had stopped, and was looking at him.

"I'm fine," he assured him, "it's just weird. Keep going."

He did. Marco leaned down, pressed his lips to the back of Ace's ear and pushed his finger in deeper. Then, his mouth once again tracing patterns over Ace's neck, sucking and biting shallowly on his skin, he started to pull his finger out and then push it back in, a little deeper each time. Ace let out a loud gasp when in one of those occasions two fingers entered him instead of one, and he tensed up again. Marco stilled his hand.

"Are you alright?"

"Y-Yes." It didn't hurt, not really, it was just an unexpected sensation. "This will take some getting used to."

Marco chuckled, and his fingers started to move again inside of Ace in a sort of circling pattern that stretched him further. Marco held himself up with his free hand to look down at Ace's face.

"You'll get used to it. You just need practice."

"Oh, okay." With the distraction of the fingers in his ass, it took Ace a moment to realize one of the possible implications of Marco's words. "Have you ever bottomed?" he asked, curious and somewhat disbelieving.

"Of course." Ace inhaled sharply when Marco added the third finger, but glared at him right away to make it clear he didn't want him to stop. Marco kept going. "Would you like to fuck me too?" he asked with a smirk.

Ace breathed deeply.

"Ye-FUCK!" A pleasurable, toe-curling sensation ran through his body when Marco's fingers touched something inside of him. Marco did it again, and Ace groaned.

"Then," Marco said, leaning closer to brush his lips against Ace's, "pay attention and next round I'm yours."

Ace nodded. Yes, he would love that.

Marco went back to his original kneeling position between Ace's legs and pulled his fingers out. Ace was surprised to realize he missed their presence, his ass now feeling strangely empty without them.

He didn't say anything, and instead watched in fascination as Marco coated his erection with a generous amount of lube.

Marco shifted closer and took hold of Ace's legs, hooking both of them over his elbows.

"Keep them there for now," Marco told him, and Ace nodded. "This might hurt."

A hand held his hip, and Ace kept his eyes on Marco's other hand, the one directing his cock to Ace's ass.

He felt the tip against his hole, and when it breached him, there was much more pressure than there had been with the first finger. Ace pressed his lips together, but refused to close his eyes.

"Keep moving," he told Marco when he realized he had stilled.

Marco did, pushing in at a slow and torturous pace that breached Ace open more than his fingers had managed to do earlier. Ace considered telling him to push all the way in with a single thrust, but he was pretty sure that way there was a risk of hurting him more than the burning ache he was now feeling and that Marco would refuse.

Once he was completely in, Marco closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and Ace was sure he was controlling himself not to start moving yet. Ace wondered how it must feel for him, being inside Ace.

The ache had started to fade.

"Marco..." Ace panted out, and didn't need to say anything else.

Marco started to move, panting slightly as well himself, his hips rocking against Ace's, cock sliding partially out of him before coming back in. Ace moved as well, doing his best to follow the pace with his hips, but whenever he caught up Marco quickened the rhythm and depth of his thrusts until his cock came all the way out only to slam back into Ace.

Ace moaned loudly when in one of those thrusts Marco hit again that spot from before, and, above him, Marco smirked. He aimed there from then on, and hit it often enough to have Ace moaning and groaning almost constantly.

Ace grabbed Marco's hand when it moved to wrap around his cock.

"No..." he said, "I want to last."

He knew he wouldn't last much either way, but he tried to force himself not to come for as long as possible, and, when he finally couldn't hold back any longer, he came with a loud groan, coating both their bellies with his cum. It wasn't long, maybe a few thrust Ace's muddled brain couldn't bother to keep track of, when he felt a warm liquid filling him, his name moaned into his neck.

Marco fell to the side, pulling Ace with him until he was lying on Marco's chest, his cock sliding out of Ace with the movement.

"And you said I would regret it," Ace said when he could breathe normally.

Marco chuckled.

"In prison. I said you might regret it if we did it in prison."

"Well, I don't," Ace stated, turning his head up to look at Marco's grinning face, "and I'm taking you up on that offer for a second round. Just let me recover a little."

"Oh?" Marco raised an eyebrow and smirked at him. "You need time to recover? I don't need any time to recover, but if you can't keep up with an _old man_, then by all means take your time."

Ace frowned. He had known that old man comment would come back to bite him in the ass.

"Not all of us have freakish regeneration powers."

"That's a nice excuse," Marco said in a fake understanding tone that made Ace grit his teeth, "but maybe you should have thought about that before throwing that challenge at me."

That was it, and judging by Marco's smirk he was aware of it.

Ace moved to straddle his lap and frowned down at him, hands taking Marco by both sides of his face.

"I _never_ back off from a challenge."

"Prove it."

Ace leaned down and kissed him in a way that could be called almost violent. Marco seemed perfectly content with it.

* * *

As a kid, Ace had never cared much about the news. He didn't read the newspapers, and everything he knew was learned either through Dadan, Sabo or whatever he overheard both in the Gray Terminal and Goa Kingdom itself. Now, however, after so many years of isolation with scarce possibilities of learning what was going on in the world —those being limited to things Gramps might say during his visits and whatever he overheard the guards and the new prisoners talking about— Ace felt the need to just _know_ about the world.

That's why, during the days they waited for Luffy's return, he spent a good part of his time sitting somewhere on deck reading over old newspapers that Marco had lent him. Many people approached him during these times, and he ended up spending more time talking than reading —not that he minded, as this way he got to know his new crew— but he did learn some interesting information. Like how Dragon, Gramps' son and Luffy's dad, was now the most wanted man in the world. Gramps had ranted sometimes about him, but never in enough depth for Ace to know just how dangerous Dragon was past the fact of him being a wanted criminal.

He had only covered a couple of years by the time Luffy and Rayleigh returned, both of them perfectly fine because they had fled the island before an admiral could reach it. Luffy seemed to be in a great mood now that he had sent his message. They were going to wait until tomorrow's paper came out before heading for the calm belt —Marco had explained the whole plan again later the first day after Luffy left, because during the actual planning Ace had been too worried to pay much attention to the details— but would sail away from Sabaody to avoid any confrontation with the marines.

That night, for no real reason, there was a smaller version of the party at the island, with only the Whitebeard Pirates, Luffy and Rayleigh. Ace was more careful about the food this time —he still stuffed himself, and was a bit more used to it because he had been eating regularly there past few days, but this time he paid attention to his stomach and stopped at the first twinge of protest— and had his first experience with alcohol since the day he became brothers with Sabo and Luffy.

As was bound to happen his first time, Ace got drunk ridiculously soon. It turned out Ace was a weird drunk. He didn't stick to one mood, be it depressed or overly joyous, instead switching from one to another. He clung to Luffy, claiming how glad he was to have him back in his life, he challenged Rayleigh to a fight —which he lost spectacularly— and joined in all the singing even though he didn't know any of the songs.

When he jumped Marco in the middle of the deck, Marco decided he had had enough and dragged him away from the party.

Ace remembered everything of it the next morning, it turned out he wasn't even one of those drunks who didn't remember what they had done, and was teased mercilessly for his actions that night. He endured the teasing because he could tell there was no ill intent behind it. He didn't like it, though, but he figured it was something he would have to get used to.

He got the feeling people knew when to stop, because no one went so far that Ace had to beat them.

* * *

A week later, the Whitebeard Pirates and the Kuja Pirates stood at one of the shores of Rusukaina Island, an island northwest of Amazon Lily in the Calm Belt. The two crews stood separate, as the women from the Kuja Pirates were wary of all the men from the Whitebeard Pirates, and Marco had threatened hell to anybody from his family who tried anything stupid.

Talking to Luffy were both Ace and Hancock. Hancock had tried to offer to bring all sorts of things for Luffy, which Rayleigh had vetoed with good reason, because they were here to train, not on vacation. It had been amusing to Marco —and massively baffling and a source of envy for most everyone else— to realize the reason Hancock had helped Luffy was because she had a massive crush on him. Everybody was still too disconcerted or too distracted to even wonder how Luffy knew Hancock or why she was here. Even if they asked and were told, Pops had promised Hancock the World Government wouldn't learn of her role in aiding Luffy from anyone of their crew, and that had seemed to work. She may hate men in general —Luffy and Rayleigh were an exception, and Ace seemed to be to some extent on behalf of being Luffy's brother— but she was not stupid, and knew Whitebeard's word wasn't to be taken lightly.

Now Ace and Luffy were saying their goodbyes, and promising to meet in the New World in two years, when Luffy set sail again. He had told anybody who would listen about his crew, and everybody was curious to meet the people crazy enough to follow this insane and incredible kid. It hadn't been spoken out loud, but Marco knew they all agreed with the idea of meeting the Strawhat Pirates in two years' time. They were even eager about it.

When the time to depart came, the Kuja Pirates left first, Hancock still blushing and looking a mix of worried and proud of Luffy.

Marco was one of the last to board their ships, waiting for Ace. Luffy walked with Ace all the way to the ship, and as Luffy approached his eyes met Marco's. There was a serious look in them that Marco knew was strange, and he didn't need any words to understand what Luffy was trying to tell him. He nodded minutely. Of course he was going to make sure Ace would be alright.

Luffy grinned when they reached him.

"See ya, Marco," he said, chuckling, and Marco grinned back.

"Have fun training, Luffy," he told him. Which would be true, somewhat, even if he knew Rayleigh was going to be one hell of a stern teacher.

"Don't do anything _too_ stupid," Ace said in a way that implied this wasn't the first time he said it and he didn't really expect Luffy to listen to him.

Luffy laughed again and then, with a somewhat more serious grin, said:

"You just wait, Ace, next time we meet I'll be stronger than you."

"Like hell you will!" Ace exclaimed. "You think you're the only one who's gonna be training?"

As they finally left, Ace waved at Luffy for as long as the island was visible, the same way Luffy was doing while Marco could still make his silhouette out in the distance.

Once they couldn't see the island anymore, he placed a hand on Ace's shoulder.

"You mentioned training?"

* * *

Portgas D. Ace woke up with the sun shining on his face. It was late by now, and the bed was empty, the cold sheets signaling Marco had been gone for some time now. It was part of Ace's morning routine, to wake up alone most days. Once he had gotten used to sleeping on a bed, he had taken the habit of sleeping in —he thought it was to make up for all the lost time without a bed to sleep on— and Marco, who needed to sleep even less time than even an average person, let him stay in bed for as long as he wanted, with two exceptions: if there was an attack, Ace was woken up like anybody else, whatever the time —it wasn't like he would want to miss the fun, either way— and, if they were about to reach an island, Marco made sure Ace was awake by the time they reached the port, because Ace liked to take as much advantage as possible of every visit to land.

Today, however, was a normal day, and a look at the clock on the nightstand told him breakfast wasn't over yet. It wouldn't have mattered even if breakfast time had been over, because there was always food waiting for him in the mess hall when he woke up.

Ace got dressed —he didn't put a shirt on, because he had his jolly roger tattoo on his back and avoided covering it unless the weather demanded it— and left the cabin.

It had been two years now since he had joined the Whitebeard Pirates, and sometimes he felt like he had never even been in Impel Down. He had gained some weight and his ribs could no longer be counted just by looking at him, had developed a good amount of muscles —and Marco made sure on a daily basis that he knew just how much he loved them— and had a tan to his skin as a result of being exposed to the sun so often.

Things had grown tense in the crew not long after Ace had joined, when Marshal D. Teach, who now called himself _Blackbeard_, had resurfaced. He had captured one of the Eleven Supernovas, a woman by the name of Jewelry Bonney, and occupied one of the vacant posts as a Shichibukai —there had been two, Crocodile's and Moria's, who had mysteriously 'disappeared' not long after the Whitebeard Pirates' assault on Impel Down. Teach had stayed at Mariejois for two weeks after becoming a Shichibukai, unreachable to them unless they decided to attack one of the most protected places in the world —which even they would rather avoid doing again unless there was no other choice— before deciding to launch his own assault on Impel Down. The marines' reaction had been too slow, because Sakazuki —the new Fleet Admiral now that Sengoku had resigned after the Whitebeard Pirates' attack on Impel Down— had decided to move Marine Headquarters to the New World, to the base that had previously been G-1, and G-1, now at Marineford, didn't have the necessary power to stop the attack. With his power, Blackbeard had neutralized Magellan —miraculously alive after his fight with Marco— in no time, and his crew had taken care of the rest of the guards. By the time the ships from G-5 had arrived, level six was in an uproar, and it was a massacre. The Blackbeard Pirates had doubled their number with some of the most dangerous prisoners in level six —Shiliew included— and many prisoners from level six had managed to escape even though they hadn't joined the crew. That second fact hadn't been revealed to the public —the first one was unavoidable, because the first thing Blackbeard did afterwards was attack and destroy a nearby island to announce his presence and his intention of becoming one of the most dangerous pirates to the world— but anybody with access to the underworld could learn about the breakout easily enough.

Blackbeard's actions had made killing him more difficult. Not only had he gained some very powerful members to his crew, but many pirates had gone to join him as well, either assimilating into his crew or becoming his allies. As a result, though not a Yonko by name, Blackbeard was thought by many as being just as dangerous and as powerful as one. He was even conquering islands in the New World that weren't under the protection of a Yonko. There were even some rumors around, unconfirmed so far, that he had a way of stealing devil fruit powers, and could use them himself. Marco had told Ace that Teach had a strange body structure, and it might not be entirely crazy to think he could have more than one devil fruit power without dying as anybody else would.

Because of this, instead of attacking, the Whitebeard Pirates had been preparing for war all this time. Because there _would_ be war, the confrontation was unavoidable, but instead of seeking it they would wait, prepare, and, when it happened, they would be as ready to win as they could.

Ace was much stronger now, so strong, in fact, that he had been offered the position of Second Division Commander a few months after joining the crew, and he had accepted it. Before that, there had been jokes about how he was fucking his superior —it had taken Ace some time to really accept that there was no ill intent behind the jokes in the crew, contrary to all the mocking from level six, and now he was very comfortable with them— and there had been some fake complaints about how he was taking away the crew's fun now that he was a commander like Marco.

About a year ago, Ace had had a very uncomfortable encounter with Gramps, who had showed up out of nowhere on the island they had been staying at. He had been expecting to be beaten to an inch of his life —or until Pops or the other commanders managed to take Gramps down— but there had been no fight. Gramps had reluctantly admitted he never thought he would be glad about having a criminal in the family, and had told him to never get caught again. Then he had sat down with them and they had all gotten drunk together. It had been the best day Ace had had with Gramps since leaving Dawn Island.

Ace entered the mess hall, his stomach already growling at the smells assaulting his nose, and he made a beeline for the food, piling as much as possible on his trays —over the years he had perfected the art of carrying one balanced on the top of his head so he could carry three trays at once— and went to sit next to Marco.

He had been so distracted by the food that he hadn't noticed how the volume in the room had decreased and most eyes were on him until all three trays were on the table before him.

"What?" he asked, dropping down on the bench next to Marco.

Marco grinned and handed him a newspaper.

Ace's mouth fell open. There, occupying the entire first page, were pictures of the entire Strawhat Pirates crew under the title 'THE STRAWHAT PIRATES ARE BACK!' Their bounties were underneath the pictures, and a short text spoke about them next to each of their images. Beneath Luffy's —the largest of the crew's images— was even a small picture of Ace. And, better yet, some of the images weren't the ones from the wanted posters, but instead pictures that had been taken yesterday. Luffy himself appeared running, a wide grin taking over the lower half of his face, and Ace himself grinned at seeing he looked so happy.

"Do you want to hang it?" Marco asked him, and Ace nodded enthusiastically.

Ever since Impel Down, the Whitebeard Pirates had considered Luffy an ally —even though they hadn't talked about it with him while he had been with them— and by extension the whole crew was their ally. As with all their other allies, Luffy's crew had a section on the bounties' wall, and now Ace walked to it, took two thumbtacks from the bowl on the small table next to it, and pinned the newspaper above the wanted posters from two years ago.

Marco came up next to him and looked at the wall as well.

"We're too far to meet them at Fishman Island, but we could catch up with them in a few days if we can find any more news about them.

Ace grinned, because there was no way Luffy would stay long without making it back to the newspaper. He turned to Marco.

"Sounds like a plan to me."

**The End**

* * *

Well, here you go :D I'd really love it if you told me what you think of the story ^^


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